Modern African History Fall 2015 1 A SURVEY OF AFRICAN HISTORY FROM 1500 TO THE PRESENT FALL 2015 INSTRUCTOR Marissa Mika, MHS, PhD 2015 University of Pennsylvania, University of California, Berkeley mmika@sas.upenn.edu COURSE DESCRIPTION This course is an introductory survey of the history of Africa from the late 15th century to the present. The course is divided into three time periods, which roughly correspond with the establishment of the Atlantic slave trade in the wake of the discovery of the Americas to the abolition of slavery (1500-1850s), the rise of colonial empires through World War II, (1860s- 1940s), and the advent of nationalism, decolonization, and development in Africa to the present (1950s-today). With such a large time period and vast continent, our strategy will often involve larger thematic lectures and then engaging with case studies where we can see these issues play out within a specific context. We will cover a wide variety of places, from Swahili coastal cities, to slave trading centers on the Gold Coast, to Zimbabwean hunting grounds in the bush, and the bustling streets of Kinshasa. We will also meet many African intellectuals, farmers, healers, literary figures, and revolutionaries through the texts they produced and the records they left behind. This course will also engage with the politics and strategies of representing the African continent. You will be asked to consider some of the ways historians work—how they discover and debate evidence, and how they present this material. And you’ll be asked to think about history alongside popular and contemporary representations of the continent.