History V57.0567 - Spring 2014
Africa Since 1940
Tue.-Thu. 3:30-4:45
Prof. Mohamed Mbodj, Ph.D.
Description: Description: This is a course about how Africa got to be where it is now. It covers the
period from the beginning of the crisis which shook colonial empires in the 1940s through the wave of
Independence in the 1960s through the fall of the last white regime in South Africa and a genocide in
Rwanda in 1994, to a troubled present. By bridging the conventional divide between "colonial" and
"independent" Africa, the course will open up questions about the changes in African economies,
religious beliefs, family relations, and conceptions of the world around them during the last half
century into the current one. Students will read political and literary writings by African intellectuals as
well as the work of scholars based inside and outside Africa, and they will view and discuss videos as
well. The course will emphasize the multiple meanings of politics--from local to regional to PanAfrican levels and it aspires to give students a framework for understanding the process of social and
economic change in contemporary Africa. Previous coursework on Africa could be helpful but not
required.
Requirements: All students will take a midterm and a final examination. In addition, they will write
a short paper (6-7) pages due on the last day of classes. The paper will take a contemporary theme and
look at its historical roots. Specific suggestion for topics will be passed out later. To prepare for this
assignment and more generally to link the subject of this class to current events, it is suggested that
you follow news on Africa from a quality newspaper like the New York Times or on-line African
newspaper, like South Africa's Mail and Guardian (www.mg.co.za). Full participation in class
discussion in the weekly sections and timely preparation of reading assignments are expected.
Information
Prof. Mbodj's Office: 708 King Juan Carlos Center (53 Washington Square South)
Email: mm4771@nyu.edu
Office hours: Thursdays 5-6 or by appointment
Sections
Two Sections TBA
Teaching Assistant: TBA (office hours on 5W, King Juan Carlos Center, times to be specified):
Books to buy:
Frederick Cooper, Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, 2002)
Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood (Heinemann)
David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged (Norton)
Ahmadou Kourouma, Allah is Not Obliged (Knopf/Anchor)
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Burying SM (Heinemann)
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Additional Reading:
Other required reading including chapters from books, articles, and documents will be made available
on Blackboard before the class for which it is assigned. The required books are also on reserve at
Bobst.
Sections:
The main purpose of the sections is to allow discussion of the lectures and reading for each week.
Since the sections meet on different days, reading ahead may be required. Some short documents not
listed below may be added for discussion. Students are encouraged to discuss in sections the
relationship of historical issues being raised in class to current events in Africa.
Grading:
The components of the course will have the following weighting:
Participation in discussion sections: 20%
Midterm
15%
Term paper
30%
Final exam
35%
Syllabus
Session 1: Introduction
Session 2: Colonization and African Societies
Cooper, Africa since 1940, 1-19
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 29-74
Session 3: Politics and Culture in Africa before World War II
Cooper, 20-37
William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (new ed.), 62-87
Session 4: Colonialism in crisis: development, labor crisis, and the stress of war
Start Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood
Session 5: Video and discussion: "The Magnificent African Cake" (from "Africa: a Voyage of
Discovery", [prog. 6, 57 min])
Continue Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood
Session 6: Labor, urban society, and the post-war moment
Frederick Cooper, "'Our Strike': Equality, Anticolonial Politics, and the French West African Railway
Strike of 1947-48," Journal of African History 37 (1996): 81-118.
Lisa Lindsay, "'No need... to think of home?' Masculinity and Domestic Life on the Nigerian Railway,
c. 1940-61," Journal of African History 39 (1998): 439-66.
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Session 7: Rural society: growth, change, community
Sara Berry, No Condition Is Permanent, 67-100, 135-58
Session 8: Colonialism challenged: local visions, pan-African hopes
Cooper, 38-65
J. Ayo Langley (ed.), Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa,, 758-61
Thomas Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa, 84-114
Session 9: South Africa: white nationalism and Africanism in the post-war moment
Deborah Posel, The Making of Apartheid, 61-90
Session 10: Video and Discussion: "The Rise of Nationalism" (from the series "Africa: A Voyage of
Discovery," prog. 7, 57 min.)
Cooper, 66-84
Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom, pp. 1-39, 95-110
Session 11: Political mobilization: the case of Ghana
Jean Allman, "The Youngmen and the Porcupine: Class, Nationalism and Asante's Struggle for SelfDetermination, 1954-57," Journal of African History 31 (1990): 263-80
Start reading Anderson, Histories of the Hanged
Session 12: Political mobilization: Mau Mau and Kenya
B. A. Ogot, "Revolt of the Elders: An Anatomy of the Loyalist Crowd in the Mau Mau Uprising." In
Hadith 4, edited by Ogot, 134-48
Finish Anderson, Histories of the Hanged
Sections this week: discussion of Anderson's book
Session 13: Citizenship in the French empire, citizenship in the African territory
Léopold Senghor and Sékou Touré, excerpts from J. Ayo Langley, Ideologies of Liberation in Black
Africa, 528-45, 601-16
SPRING BREAK
Session 14: Difficult beginnings: Africa in the 1960s
Cooper, 156-90
Midterm
Session 15: Southern Africa: the struggle continues
Video: "You Have Struck a Rock" (28 min.)
Cooper, 133-55
Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart (eds.), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African
Politics in South Africa, Vol 3: 205-09, 506-24, 771-96; vol 5: 387-93, 464-74, 583-85, 669-73
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Session 16: Development: from colonial project to national ambition
Cooper, 85-132
James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, 176-93
Session 17: Christianity and Politics
Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria, 166-200
Session 18: Islam and Politics
Lucy Creevey, “Islam, Women and the Role of the State in Senegal”, Journal of Religion in Africa,
Vol. 26, Fasc. 3 (Aug., 1996), pp. 268-307
Session 20: Religion and Violence I
Tim Allen, “Understanding Alice: Uganda's Holy Spirit Movement in Context”, Africa: Journal of the
International African Institute, Vol. 61, No. 3, Diviners, Seers and Prophets in Eastern Africa
(1991), pp. 370-399
Session 21: Religion and Violence II
Jibrin Ibrahim, “The Politics of Religion in Nigeria: The Parameters of the 1987 Crisis in Kaduna State”,
Review of African Political Economy, No. 45/46, Militarism, Warlords & the Problems of Democracy
(1989), pp. 65-82
Session 22: States in Crisis
Thomas Callaghy, "State, Choice and Context: Comparative Reflections on Reform and Intractability,"
in David Apter and Carl Rosberg, Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan
Africa, 184-219
Session 23: Impasses of Democracy?
Nicolas van de Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa's Emerging Party Systems”,
The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Jun., 2003), pp. 297-321
Session 24: Civil War in Sierra Leone
Sections: Ahmadou Kourouma, Allah is Not Obliged
Session 25: State and Genocide in Rwanda
Video: Rwandan Nightmare (41 min.)
Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story, 1-27, 31-95.
Session 26: Postcolonial culture
David William Cohen and Atieno Odhiambo, Burying SM, 1-99
Session 27: Past, Present, and Future: South Africa and Beyond
Cooper, 191-204
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 512-58, 594-625
Session 28: Concluding discussion
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