History 3650/ASRC 3302: West Africa and the West
History Department
Cornell University
Spring 2014
MWF 11:15-12:05
Uris Hall 262
Instructor: Prof. Sandra E. Greene
Office Hours: 1:15-2:00 M&W
and by appt.
Office Phone: 5-4124
Office: 303 Mc Graw Hall
E-mail: seg6@cornell.edu
Course Description:
1450 marks the time when peoples, ideas, material goods and beliefs began to move on a regular
basis around the Atlantic, first between Africa and Europe, and then later between Africa, North
and South America and the Caribbean as well as Europe. This course examines these movements
and explores how West Africans affected and were affected by these interchanges over a 400 year
period.
Texts:
1. David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 1450-185. Third Edition. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2002.
2. David Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Third Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 2002
3. Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past New York: Beacon Press, 1990.
4. Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture. New York: Beacon
Press, 1992.
5. George Brandon, Santeria from Africa to the New World (1993)
6. Paul E. Lovejoy. Editor. Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (2000)
7. Uris Electronic Reserve Readings (UR): Listed below under each weekly topic.
Course Requirements:
All students are required/expected to attend all sessions and to participate actively in discussions.
Four Review/Discussion 5- 7 page papers….…………………..………@ 20% each = 80%
NOTE ON PLAGARISM: Plagiarism is misrepresenting somebody else's intellectual
work - ideas, information, writing, thinking - as your own. In other words, it is a
misuse of source material. Whether intentional or unintentional, plagiarism is a
serious violation of Cornell's Code of Academic Integrity. It is available as a
booklet from all college advising offices and online at
http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html. Every student is responsible for
reading and abiding by the rules in the Code.
NOTE ON COMPUTER USE: No computers of any kind will be allowed in class during
class discussion sessions. Bring hard copies of the reading to be discussed that day to class.
Participation/Attendance………………....…………………………………………....20%
TOTAL………………………………………………………………………………100%
Requirements Discussed:
The four Review/Discussion 5-7 page papers should focus on discussing, and then coming to
your own conclusions about the readings, lectures and discussions we will have in class with
regard to four of the eight substantive topics below (Weeks II -XIII).
An example: If you chose to write on Technology Transfers, indicate what the readings say
(briefly), and what is important about the topic for understanding the history of West Africa and
the West. In other words, what does this section tell us that we didn’t know before and why is this
new information important for others to know?
Paper Due Dates: All papers are due the Monday immediately after the week that the topic of
the paper has been discussed. Late papers will not be accepted.
To help you avoid waiting to do all your papers in the last five weeks of the course, students are
required to complete at least two of the four papers by March 10.
Discussions will be based on the readings for the indicated week and be led by student
volunteers. Everyone is expected to attend all sessions,. You are also expected to complete the
readings, contribute to the discussion and lead or help lead at least one discussion.
Attendance: You are granted a total of four absences (including sick days). If you are absent
from class more than four days, your final grade will be dropped by a letter.
Extra Credit: If you wish to REPLACE (not make-up) a grade on one of your papers, you may
do so by writing an essay on the readings from Weeks XV or XVI. Whatever the replacement
grade,, whether it is higher or lower than the grade it is to replace, it will be counted instead of
the earlier grade.
Weekly Schedule
WEEK I: Introductions
January 22(W): Introduction to Course/Professor/ Fellow Students/Syllabus
First Contact/First Impressions
January 24 (F):
January 27 (M):
Lecture
Discussion
Readings:
David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe. Chapter 1 and Chapter Two
Week II: The Slave Trade Era : Developments in History and Historiography
January 29 (W):
January 31( F):
February 3 (M):
Lecture
Discussion
Discussion
Readings:
a. Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe. Chapter VI (pp. 157-172).
b. David Northrup, Editor. The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2nd Edition (2002) Part III
and IV.
Week III: The Slave Trade Era: Developments in Cultural Theory
February 5 (W):
February 7-10 (F/M):
Lecture
Discussions
Readings:
a. Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, pp. ix-xviii, 1-32, then your
choice of Chapt. VI, VII, or VIII
b. Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture
c. Custom Text: Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and
White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia (1987) pp. 3-11, 71-99.
WEEK IV: Commerce and Culture
February 12- 14 (W/F): Lecture/Discussion
February 17: (M)
FEBRUARY BREAK
Readings:
a. David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe. Chapter 3 and 5.
b. Lillian Ashcraft-Eason, “’She Voluntarily Hath Come’: A Gambian woman
Trader in Colonial Georgia in the Eighteenth Century,” in Paul E.
Lovejoy. Editor. Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (2000) 202-221.
c. Custom Text: Paul Lovejoy, “Trust, Pawnship and Atlantic History: The
Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade,” American
Historical Review, 104, 2 (1999) 333-355.
Week V: Technology Knowledge Transfers
February 19 (W):
Lecture
February 21 (F):
Film: Family Across the Sea
February 24 (M):
Discussion
.
Readings:
a. David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe. Chapter 4.
b. Custom Text: Judith A Carney, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botantical
Legacy in the Atlantic World (2009)65-79, 123-138.
Week VI: Religions in Motion: Traditional African Religions
February 26-28 (W/F): Lectures
March 3 (M)
Film: Yo Soy Hechicero (I am a Sorcerer)
Readings on Traditional African Religions of West Africa and the Americas
a. George Brandon, Santeria from Africa to the New World (1993) 9-18, 37-50,
52-78, 95-104, 105-120.
b. Custom Text: George Brandon, “Sacrificial Practices in Santeria, an AfricanCuban Religion in the United States,” in Africanisms in American Culture
(1990) 124-137, 143-145.
Week VII: Religions in Motion: West African Islam
March 5 (W):
March 7 (F)
March 10(M):
Discussion (of readings for Week VI
Lecture
Discussions (of readings and film for Week VII)
Readings on Islam:
a. Custom Text: Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah (1998) Chapt. 3
b. UR: Philip D. Curtin, “Ayuba Suleiman Diallo of Bondu,” in Africa
Remembered. Edited by Philip D. Curtin (1967) 17-59.
BY MARCH 10 YOU SHOULD HAVE HANDED IN AT LEAST TWO
OF THE FOUR ESSAYS
Week IX: Ethnic Identities Shaped and Reformed
March 12 (W):
March 14 (F):
March 17 (M):
Lecture
Lecture
Discussion
Readings:
a. Custom Text: David Northrup, “Becoming African: Identity Formation among
Liberated Slaves in Nineteenth Century Sierra Leone,” Slavery and
Abolition, 27, 1 (2006) 1-21.
Week X: Architectural and Art Forms: Atlantic Circulations
March 19 (W):
March 21 (F):
March 24 (M):
Lecture
Film: Tubali
Discussion
Readings:
a. Custom Text: Peter Mark, “Constructing Identity: Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Century Architecture in the Gambia-Geba Region and the Articulation of
Luso-African Identity,” History in Africa, 22 (1995) 307-327.
b. Custom Text: William Chapman, “Slave Villages in the Danish West Indies:
changes of the late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,
Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 4 (1991) 108-120.
c. Custom Text: Garrett Fesler, “Excavating the Spaces an Interpreting the
Places of Enslaved Africans and their Descendants,” in Cabin, Quarter,
Plantation: Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery.
Edited by Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg (2010) 27-49.
Week XI: Gender and the Family in Africa and the Americas Through Time
March 26 (W):
Lecture
March 28 (F):
Discussion
Readings:
a. Custom Text: John Thornton, “Sexual Demography: The Impact of the Slave
Trade on the Family Structure,” in Women and Slavery in Africa (1997)
39-47.
b. Custom Text: Richard Follett, “Gloomy Melancholy: Sexual Reproduction
among Louisiana Slave Women, 1840-60,” in Women and Slavery,
Volume Two: The Modern Atlantic (2007) 54-75.
SPRING BREAK: MARCH 31- APRIL 4
Week XII: Abolition
April 7 (M)
Lecture
April 9 (W):
Discussion
April 11 (F)
Discussion
Readings:
a. David Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Second Edition. (2002) 134-149;
168-187.
b. Custom Text: Adam Hochschild, “Against All Odds,” Mother Jones
(Jan/Feb. 2004).
c. Custom Text; Corn bill of 1815 and Slavery Registry Bill of 1815.
d. Custom Text: Adam Hochschild, “The Sweets of Liberty,” in Bury the
Chains: prophets and rebels in the fight to free an empire’s slaves
(2005) Chapter 15 (pp. 213-225).
Week XIII: After Abolition: : African’s New Export Trade and the Expansion of Domestic
Slavery
April 14 (M):
April16 (W):
April 18 (F):
Lecture
Lecture
Discussion
Readings:
a. Custom Text: Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery (2000), 140-152.
b. Francine Shields, “Those Who Remained Behind: Women Slaves in 19th
Century Yorubaland.” Paul E. Lovejoy, Identity in the Shadow of
Slavery (2000) Chapter 11:
c. Custom Text: A.G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (1973)
124-135.
Week XIV: West Africa and the West during the Colonial Era
April 21 (M):
April 23 (W):
Lecture
Discussion
Readings:
a. Custom Text: Vincent B. Khapoya, The African Experience: An Introduction,
pp. 154-159.
b. Custom Text: R. D. Ralston, “Africa and the New World,” from the
UNESCO History of Africa, Vol. VII: African Under Colonial
Domination, 1880-1935. Edited by A. Adu Boahen (1985) pp. 746-775.
Week XV: Contemporary Exoduses
April 25 (F):
April 28 (M):
Lecture
Discussion
Readings:
a. Custom Text: A. E. Afigbo and E A. Ayandele “West Africa since
independence,” from The Making of Modern Africa (1986) 55-79
b. Custom Text: BBC News: “Billy’s Journey: Crossing the Sahara, “ “Gao’s
Deadly Migrant Trade,” “Billy’s Journey: Europe at Last.”
c. Custom Text: Asale, Angel-Ajani, Displacing Diaspora: Trafficking, African
Women and Transnational Practices,” in Diasporic Africa: A Reader.
Edited by Micahel A. Gomez (2006) 290-308.
d. Custom Text: Joseph Takougang, “Contemporary African Immigrants to the
United States,” http://africamigration.com/archive
Week XVI: Contemporary Returns
April 30 (W):
Lecture/ Discussion
Readings:
a. Custom Text: Edward M. Bruner, “Tourism in Ghana: The Representation of
Slavery and the Return of the Black Diaspora” American
Anthropologist, 98, 2 (1996) 290-304.