Kursinformation

This interdisciplinary module leads students to explore the colonial processes through which human populations have been categorized as ethnic and racial groups, and the political, historical, social, linguistic and cultural effects of this constitution. Students develop critical and comparative thinking skills about the ways in which ethnicity and race are constructed in and beyond Africa. Against the background of the 'Scramble for Africa' students are trained to develop critical perspectives of the colonial construction of the "native". The course will expose students to classic and contemporary readings and focus on the lived reality of African people in diverse countries on the continent and in the diaspora. The relationship between power, ethnic and racial identity politics, and the construction of boundaries in the creation of difference between social groups is a focus of the course. Decolonisation, both in its historical and contemporary meaning will be discussed. We will question assumptions about Africa as a site of primordial ethnicity and students will learn how recent scholarship on race is reshaping the research field of African Studies.