Learning objectives
The course aims to achieve the following objectives in relation to specific educational indicators:
a) At the end of the course, students will have acquired a solid ability to critically read the main events that characterized pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa.
b) The course will provide tools to understand the main interpretative specificities of the African continent in the local and in the global contexts, through an historical, political and social reading.
c) At the end of the course, students will have acquired the communication skills and terminological competence necessary to organize the topics covered in class with expository effectiveness.
d) At the end of the course students will have a good knowledge of how to critically position themselves on sources and concepts that have dominated past, and in a certain sense present, debates on Africa within Europe.
Prerequisites
None (if not the ability to read some sources in English).
Course unit content
This course offers an introduction and critical reflections on the history of the African continent from the late pre-colonial period, to the colonization carried out by European powers to the process of decolonization and the main trends and actors in the post-colonial period. The course will refer to particular examples of African states and societies in sub-Saharan Africa in the colonial and post-colonial periods. In the course we will pay particular attention in providing means, contents and terminology to understand Africa and its representations in the contemporary world, while maintaining a dialectical tension between past and present representations and understandings of the continent.
Full programme
More specifically the course classes will cover the following topics:
Debate on the representation of Africa in the European imagination (continuities and ruptures); the Atlantic trade of African slaves, pre-colonial civilizations, the Berlin conference and the partition of Africa, examples of different colonial states, colonization as a complex system, liberation movements, post-colonial thought, the post-colonial state and its challenges, democratization processes, development processes, identity/ies in a continent undergoing transformation.
Bibliography
1. Book chapters and journal articles selected by the course convenor. These will be indicated in the online portal in due course.
2. L'Africa contemporanea, Anna Maria Medici, Arrigo Pallotti, Mario Zamponi, 2017.
3. Un testo a scelta tra: a) Storia del colonialismo italiano. Politica, cultura e memoria
dall'età liberale ai nostri giorni, Valeria Deplano & Alessandro Pes 2024.
b) Breve storia del Sudafrica: dalla segregazione alla democrazia, Mario Zamponi, 2009.
Teaching methods
Lectures by the course convenor (presentations integrated with power point slides and videos), discussions and debates, group and individual exercises in class (according to the number of students attending class).
Assessment methods and criteria
Oral exam will be on the topics covered in class and on the readings assigned.
Other information
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2030 agenda goals for sustainable development
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