HIST 104
Travel Narratives and African History
Last Offered Spring 2015
Division II Writing Skills
Cross-listed AFR 104
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

In a way, all historical thinking and writing deals with travel accounts given that, as many scholars have noted, the past can be likened to a foreign country and the historian can be viewed as a traveler in foreign places. Nevertheless, actual travel narratives–narratives about the actual physical visits of writers to distant lands–call for careful and critical analysis because they can be seductive, and they can shape the ways we think about the present–and the past–of distant lands and cultures. This course discusses Arab, Indian, European, African and African American travel narratives about various regions of Africa since the 14th century. We will mine the travel accounts for descriptions of local contexts. We will also explore what travel writing says about the author’s perceptions of self, home, and “other.” Ultimately, we will investigate the authors’ biases and how the narratives influence both our perception of Africa and the writing of African history. This course is highly interdisciplinary and draws heavily on literary, anthropological, geographical, and historical methodologies.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 3184
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation will be based on class participation, oral reports, 1-2 short papers and a research paper
Prerequisites: first-year or sophomore standing; juniors or seniors with permission of instructor
Enrollment Preferences: first-year students, and then sophomores who have not previously taken a 100-level seminar
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
AFR 104 Division II HIST 104 Division II
Attributes: HIST Group A Electives - Africa
INST African Studies Electives

Class Grid

Updated 9:58 am

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