Narratives of African Civilizations

Semester and Year	FA 2010
Course Number	IDSEM-UG1197
Section	001
Instructor	Dan Dawson
Days	Mon
Time	3:30 PM - 6:10 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement	HUM, PREMOD, GLOBAL

Description

African civilizations speak to us as much through monumental edifices, visual artifacts, sign systems, oral tradition, and films as they do through alphabetic texts. In their varied expressions, these societies, ancient and contemporary, present us with new ways of knowing. When we encounter these social imaginations through their multiple texts, the experience is reflexive, double-imaged, because of the complex interaction of the perceptions of Africa with the West’s own image of itself. Texts may include hieroglyphics, architectural symbolism, music, visual art, epics, folktales and proverbs, cosmologies and rituals (such as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead) , The Epic of Sundiata (which explores medieval Ghana and Mali), and the society of the Dogon and its extraordinary cosmology. African modernist art and writing will also be represented, through novels like Conde’s Segu,  Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions , and Mda’s Ways of Dying , and films like Lumumba, Mandabi, and Hyenas .

Course Type

Interdisciplinary Seminars (IDSEM-UG)