History 3650/ASRC 3302: West Africa and the West

History Department

Cornell University

Fall 2009

 

MWF 11:15-12:05

White Hall 106

 

Instructor:  Prof. Sandra E. Greene                         Office Hours: 1:45-2:30 M&W and by appt.

Office:  303 Mc Graw Hall                                     Office Phone:  5-4124

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, 1450-1850.New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.

 

2.  David Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Second 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.       Paul E.  Lovejoy, Identity in the Shadow of Slavery London: Continuum, 2000.CUSTOM TEXT

 

6.  Uris Electronic and Hard-copy  Reserve Readings (UR):  Listed below under each weekly topic.

 

Course Requirements:

 

All students are required/expected to attend all sessions, to lead at least one discussion session and to participate actively when not leading a discussion. 

 

Four Review/Discussion 5- page papers….…………………..………@ 20% each = 80%

 

Participation/Attendance………………....…………………………………………....20%

 

 TOTAL………………………………………………………………………………100%

 

Requirements Discussed:

 

The four Review/Discussion 5-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 IV, V, VI, VII/VIII, IX, X, XI, XII AND XIII).  Each review/discussion paper must address the substantive topic in light of the relevant viewpoints/theories/debates discussed in the readings for Weeks III and IV.

 

An example:  If you chose to write on Technology Transfers, indicate what the readings say (briefly), how they reinforce or contradict those theories discussed in Weeks III ands IV that are relevant to the topic. Indicate as well 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 October 26.

 

Friday classes:  Because discussions sessions will be held on Friday, attendance that day is mandatory as is attendance on Monday and Wednesday.

 

Discussions will be based on the readings for the indicated week and be led by student volunteers.  As indicated.  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

 

August 28: Introduction to Course/Professor/ Fellow Students/Syllabus

 

WEEK II:  First Contact/First Impressions

 

August 31-                    Lecture

September 2:                 Discussion

 

September 4:  NO CLASS –PROFESSOR IS AWAY AT A PROFESSIONAL MEETING.

 

Readings:

David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-17) and Chapter Two (pp. 26-37).

 

Week III: The Slave Trade Era : Developments in History and Historiography

 

September 7-9:             Lectures

September 11:               Discussion

 

Readings:

            a.  Northrup,  Africa’s Discovery of Europe. Chapter VI (pp. 158-173).

b.  David Northrup, Editor. The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2nd Edition (2002) Part III and IV.

c.WWW.npyl.org/rsearch/sc.sc.html: Examine this site  for images and texts about slavery and the slave trade, abolition and the African-American migration experience.

 

Week IV: The Slave Trade Era: Developments in Cultural Theory

 

September 14:               Lecture

September 16-18:          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.  UR:  Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia (1987) pp. 3-11, 71-99. 

 

WEEK V:  Commerce and Culture

 

September 21- 23:         Lectures

September 25:               Discussion

 

Readings: 

                        a.  David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe.  Chapter 3 and 5.

b.  UR:  George E. Brooks, “The Signares of Saint-Louis and Goree: Women Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth Century Senegal,” in women in Africa. Edited by Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay (1976)20-44.

c.  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.

d.  UR:  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 VI: Technology Transfers

 

September 28:              Lecture

September 30:               Film:  Family Across the Sea

October 2:                    Discussion

.

Readings: 

a.  David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe.   Chapter 4.

b.  UR:  Frederick Knight, “In an Ocean of Blue: West African Indigo Workers in the Atlantic World to 1800,”  in Diasporic Africa: A Reader. Edited by Michael A. Gomez (2006) 28-44.

 

                       

Week VII:  Movements in Religion: Islam, Christianity and Traditional African Religions of West Africa-I

 

October 5-7:                  Lectures

October 9:                     Film:  Yo Soy Hechicero (I am a Sorcerer)

 

Reading:  REVIEW David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe Chapter 2 (pp. 24-33); and read Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, pp. 37-43.

 

Readings on Traditional African Religions of West Africa

a.  UR:  Sandra T. Barnes and Paul Girshick Ben-Amos, “Ogun, the Empire Builder,”  in Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New, 2nd Edition.  Edited by Sandra T. Barnes (1997)  39-64.

b.  UR:  Karen McCarthy Brown, “ Systematic Remembering, Systematic Forgetting: Ogou in Haiti,” in ,”  in Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New, 2nd Edition.  Edited by Sandra T. Barnes (1997) 65-89.

Readings on Islam:

a.  UR:  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.

 

Week VIII: Religions in Motion: Islam, Christianity and Traditional African Religions of West Africa-II

 

Oct. 12:                                    Fall Break

Oct. 14-16:                    Discussions (of readings and film in Week VII)

 

 

 

Week IX:  Ethnic Identities Shaped and Reformed

 

Oct. 19:                                    Lecture

Oct. 21:                                    Film:  Bahia- Africa in the Americas

Oct. 23:                                    Discussion

 

            Readings:

a.   UR:  J. Lorand Matory, “The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots  of the Yoruba Nation, “Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41, 1 (1999) 72-103

b. UR:  David Northrup, “Becoming African: Identity Formation among Liberated Slaves in Nineteenth Century Sierra Leone,” Slavery and Abolition, 27, 1 (2006) 1-21. 

c.  UR:  Bahia: Africa in the Americas-Classroom Notes

 

 

 

 

BY OCTOBER 26, YOU SHOULD HAVE HANDED IN AT LEAST TWO OF THE FOUR  ESSAYS

 

 

Week X:  Architectural and Art Forms: Atlantic Circulations

 

Oct. 26:                                    Lecture

Oct. 28:                                    Film:     Tubali

Oct. 30:                                    Discussion

 

            Readings:

a.       UR:  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.       UR:  Babatunde Lawal, “Reclaiming the Past: Yoruba Elements in African-American Arts,” in The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (2004) 291-324.

c.       UR:  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.

 

 

Week XI:  Gender and the Family in Africa and the Americas Through Time

Nov. 2-4:                      Lectures

Nov.6:                          Discussion

 

            Readings:

UR:  John Thornton, “Sexual Demography:  The Impact of the Slave Trade on the Family Structure,” in Women and Slavery in Africa (1997) 39-47.

Hilary McD. Beckles, “Female Enslavement in the Caribbean and Gender Ideologies, ” in   Paul E. Lovejoy, Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (2000) 163-182.

UR:   Barbara Krauthamer, “A Particular Kind of Freedom:  Black Women, Slavery, Kinship and Freedom in the [18th century] American Southeast,”  in Women and Slavery, Volume Two: The Modern Atlantic (2007) 100-127.

UR:  Richard Follett, “Gloomy Melancholy: Sexual Reproduction among Louisiana Slave Women, 1840-60,”  in Women and Slavery, Volume Two: The Modern Atlantic (2007) 54-75.

 

 

Week XII:   Abolition

Nov.9-11;                     Lectures

                       

Nov. 13            :                       Discussion

 

Readings:

a.   David Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade. Second Edition.  (2002)  134-149;  168-187.

b.  UR:  Adam Hochschild, “Against All Odds,” Mother Jones (Jan/Feb. 2004).

c.  UR;  Corn bill of 1815 and Slavery Registry Bill of 1815. 

d.  UR:  Adam Hochschild, “TheSweets 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

 

Nov. 16:                        Lecture

 

Nov. 18:                        Discussion

 

Nov. 20:                        NO CLASS- PROFESSOR IS ATTENDING A PROFESSIONAL MEETING

 

            Readings:

a.  UR:  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.  UR:  A.G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (1973) 124-135.

 

Week XIV:   West Africa and the West during the Colonial Era

 

Nov. 23:                        Lecture/Discussion

 

            Readings:

a. UR:  Vincent B. Khapoya, The African Experience: An Introduction, pp. 154-159.

b.  UR:  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.

 

Nov. 25:                        Thanksgiving Break

 

Nov. 27:                        Thanksgiving Break

 

Week XV:  Contemporary Exoduses

 

Nov. 30:                        Lecture/Discussion

 

            Readings:

                        a.  UR: A. E. Afigbo and E A. Ayandele “West Africa since independence,” from The Making of Modern Africa (1986) 55-79

b.  UR:  BBC News:  “Billy’s Journey: Crossing the Sahara, “  “Gao’s Deadly Migrant Trade,” “Billy’s Journey: Europe at Last.”

c.  UR:  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.  UR:  Joseph Takougang, “Contemporary African Immigrants to the United States,” http://africamigration.com/archive

Week XVI:  Contemporary Returns

 

Dec. 2:                         Lecture

 

Dec. 4:                         Discussion

 

            Readings:

a.  UR:  Edward M. Bruner, “Tourism in Ghana:  The Representation of Slavery and the Return of the Black Diaspora”  American Anthropologist, 98, 2 (1996) 290-304.

b.  UR: James T. Campbell, “Counting the Bodies,” from Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa 1787-2005 (2006) 365-404.