PROGRAM OF AFRICAN STUDIES

This class will consider some key questions about politics in Africa at the present time. This will not be a survey. The primary focus will be the nation state: governance, democracy, and development. A second theme, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, is what happens when an African state fails and when international intervention such as humanitarian aid appears necessary. Our case studies will be Ethiopia and Rwanda (genocide/post genocide) and famine). Sub-themes will include the strength of internal institutions and government effectiveness.

Food security is one of the wicked problems of our time, an issue so complex that it seems to defy resolution. One camp suggests that if only the world could produce more food, everyone could be fed. The other camp claims that we already produce more than enough food to feed the world's growing population, and that food insecurity arises from unequal access to resources. At the crux of these perspectives are different understandings of how we might achieve social and environmental sustainability?should we produce more or consume less? In this class, we'll approach these complex issues from a social and historical perspective rooted in anthropology. The class is divided into three parts. The first will consider the different definitions of food security, the ways hunger is measured, and the commonly discussed causes of food insecurity. We will historically situate the emergence of chronic food insecurity to show the different situations in which insecurity arises, and show how a long-term view complicates traditional understandings of the causes of food insecurity. This portion will also help students develop skills to think about long-term consequences, which is essential for evaluating the sustainability of solutions proposed to ameliorate food insecurity. The third portion of the class will review some of these proposed solutions. Finally, the last portion of the class will examine how we can achieve long-term food sustainability, ending with student-designed research proposals and ideas on how to realize that goal.

First-Year Arabic, Arabic 111, is a three-quarter sequence, focusing on developing basic proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in reading, writing, speaking and listening as well as in cultural knowledge. After an introduction to the Arabic letters and sounds (through Alif Baa, the first volume of the Al-Kitaab Arabic language program), students will begin to work with Al-Kitaab fii Tacallum al-cArabiyya, a textbook for Beginning Arabic (Part One) which comes with a DVD with audio and video materials, and a companion website with interactive exercises.

Arabic 111-2, taught in the Winter Quarter, is the second quarter of first-year Arabic. The course builds on material learned in the first quarter by introducing additional fundamental sentence structures, by presenting new vocabulary, and by providing students ample opportunities to practice and expand all skills. We will continue to use videos and texts centered around topics in Al-Kitaab Part One as well as work with material from the companion website and the DVD. The course covers chapters 2-6 in Al-Kitaab, Part One.

This is the second part of a three-quarter course (121) which continues the path of Arabic I (111-1,2,3). This course deals with the next level of essential topics for daily and literary use of the Arabic language. This course will teach students the basics of Arabic grammar and case markings as well as have students master the verbal pattern system. This course will further develop listening comprehension with students listening to longer stories and dialogues. Students will also be exposed to cultural norms of the Arab world through culture pieces and interviews. The emphasis of this course will be on training students to read and understand a wider variety of Arabic texts and to work toward more efficient reading, to discuss orally text content, and to write short paragraphs and translation (English/Arabic/English).

This is a high intermediate level three-quarter course in Modern Standard Arabic in which students will continue to advance their proficiency in the Arabic language and learn more about the culture and the people of the Middle East. Based on Alkitaab Part II and its companion website, the course will enhance learners' ability to read, write, understand and discuss challenging authentic Arabic text from different sources. This will include a variety of textual resources from newspapers, magazines, journal articles, audio and video clips, short stories and other relevant material to the students' field of study.

This quarter we will discuss travelling and trips in the past and during the modern era, the most famous world explorers in Islamic history and the world. We will navigate through celebration norms and how people prepare for the most important holiday season in the Arab world for Muslims and Christians. We will learn about holidays for Qopts and "Amazigh". We will also learn about the issues of media and journalism in the Middle East. We will work on chapters 7-9 of "Alkitaab" Part II, and our work will be communicative based (role plays, presentations, interviews, and discussions).

This course is for undergraduate and graduate students as well as post doc researchers who are interested in exploring contemporary Arabic poetry and how it has become a tool for forming national identities. Under the theme of "I am an Arab", the course offers an invaluable opportunity to engage with literary works of the Modern Middle East (roughly spanning the period from 1910-1980) cohesively examining the power of the written word within the historical, political, and cultural breadth of the region. The readings represent the region's best writers: poets who are bound together not by the borders and nationalities that separate them, but by a common experience of colonial domination and Western imperialism.

This course will examine the central issues of development economics with a geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Our methodological approach will be to use primary data and rigorous empirical methods to examine patterns of economic activity and to evaluate the effectiveness of development policies and programs. The class will be organized around weekly presentations of student research on 9 key questions of development in Africa.

This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health governance and interventions, global economies and their impacts on public health, medical humanitarianism, global mental health, maternal and child health, pandemics (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, H1N1, Swine Flu), malaria, food insecurity, health and human rights, and global health ethics.

No description available.

Contemporary Africa's social and political problems are often portrayed as holdovers from a "traditional" past. The continent's poverty is usually explained as the absence of "modernity"; ethnic tensions are assumed to be a continuation of ancient tribalism; famines are said to be similar to those in the Bible. In contrast, this course will focus on the processes of modern history that have shaped the continent, emphasizing those that first emerged during the period of colonial rule (ca. 1890 to ca. 1960). Although we will not minimize the significance of Africa's older historical inheritances, particularly in the realms of religion, family institutions, and political culture, we will see that the presence of such long-standing cultural traditions does not imply the absence of change. On the contrary, one of our central themes will be how traditions have been adapted, transformed, and innovated over the course of the century. Throughout the quarter we will focus on how ordinary men and women struggled to shape their lives. To that end, the imaginative insights provided by African novelists are important complements to the broader historical trends outlined in the lectures and other texts.

History Area of Concentration: African/Middle East

"Hitchhiking the Atlantic" charts the history of the Atlantic World through the biographies of individuals on the move. Some of these travelers were world historical figures, while others were ordinary, common people nearly forgotten to history. All of them had cross-cultural encounters and made connections that fundamentally altered their own lives and shaped historical processes much larger than themselves. We will focus on Atlantic travelers who effected and reflected historical change relating to three themes: racism and American slavery, industrial capitalism, and anti/colonialism. These themes are not isolated to the past; they continue to unfold in the present, shaping societies across the globe in the twenty-first century. Students will gain an understanding of how disparate histories in Africa, the Americas, and Europe were (and remain) interconnected on multiple scales, from individual to empire. We will examine individuals' journeys and life experiences through autobiographical source material and situate figures in various contexts through supplementary readings. The class will produce original biographies of Atlantic World travelers and use a digital mapping application to trace their movements. No prior experience with digital mapping is necessary; students interested in learning programming basics in a supportive and structured environment are welcome.

History Area of Concentration: Americas, European, African/MIddle East

One prevailing approach to the comparative study of race identifies it with a form of Western thought that arose in the modern or early modern age and subsequently spread with the expansion of the West in the post-Columbian era. Yet historians of the Western idea of race offer vastly different accounts of its genealogy, tracing its origins to classical antiquity, to the rise of modern biological science, or to some era in between. Other scholars approach race as way of categorizing human difference that has taken myriad iterations throughout global history, intersecting in later eras with the discourses of white supremacy introduced by Western empire. We will sample a variety of approaches, including works by anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and historians of science. Topics will include: race, nation, and progress; the history of whiteness; sexuality and colonial metissage; the ideological legacies of slavery; "communal" violence and racial thought in South Asia; Hamiticism and racial thought in central Africa.

Crime fiction is where questions of law, justice, and community are investigated, but only rarely resolved. This course will explore this problem in a transnational context, so as to expose the fundamental issues of power and difference that have underlain the genre from its very beginning. We will start with the imperial foundations of Sherlock Holmes' investigations, and then work our way through texts produced in colonial and postcolonial settings including in colonial India, post-independence Algeria, and contemporary Egypt. Surveying over 150 years of detection, we will use these texts to understand the relationship between criminal investigation and literary interpretation, between history and the present, and between literary style and political authority.

In this course we will be thinking about how and whether constitutions shape national values and offer a framework for legitimacy and governance to hold together diverse societies and resolve deeply rooted social tensions and ethnic divisions. We will consider the constitutional responses of other democratic countries such as the U.S., Canada, India, France, Germany, Great Britain, South Africa and Australia to the challenges of capital crimes, right to life/abortion, terrorism, racism, gender disparities, religious discrimination. In learning about the varying traditions of written and unwritten constitutions, civil and common law and the foundations and structures of separation of powers and judicial review of the constitutionality of laws in these countries, students will learn to think critically about the U.S. Constitution and the different ways in which constitutional democracies provide for public order, counter-majoritarian governance, equality and protection of the rights of minorities through rule of law and question whether constitutional solutions can address the kinds of social and political problems we have today.

In this course we will be thinking about how and whether constitutions shape national values and offer a framework for legitimacy and governance to hold together diverse societies and resolve deeply rooted social tensions and ethnic divisions. We will consider the constitutional responses of other democratic countries such as the U.S., Canada, India, France, Germany, Great Britain, South Africa and Australia to the challenges of capital crimes, right to life/abortion, terrorism, racism, gender disparities, religious discrimination. In learning about the varying traditions of written and unwritten constitutions, civil and common law and the foundations and structures of separation of powers and judicial review of the constitutionality of laws in these countries, students will learn to think critically about the U.S. Constitution and the different ways in which constitutional democracies provide for public order, counter-majoritarian governance, equality and protection of the rights of minorities through rule of law and question whether constitutional solutions can address the kinds of social and political problems we have today.

No description available.

This is the second part of a three-quarter sequence of introduction to Swahili language and culture. The course is designed purposely to reinforce the acquisition of basic conversational Swahili through activities that enhance the four communicative skills (speaking, writing, listening and reading) that was started in the previous quarter. Through performance of cultural communicative activities, students will continue to gain an understanding of basic Swahili grammatical structures, and cultural insights about the people of East Africa.

This is the second part of a three-quarter sequence of introduction to Swahili language and culture. The course is designed purposely to reinforce the acquisition of basic conversational Swahili through activities that enhance the four communicative skills (speaking, writing, listening and reading) that was started in the previous quarter. Through performance of cultural communicative activities, students will continue to gain an understanding of basic Swahili grammatical structures, and cultural insights about the people of East Africa.