Readings in African History: Environmental History of Africa

This seminar will explore the history of human-environmental interaction on the African continent. The course examines how scholars have begun unraveling dominant historical understandings of African landscapes, cultures, and pre-colonial ecologies. A major portion of the course looks at how colonial relations shaped conflicts over environmental control and ecological change and the legacies of such dynamics in the postcolonial era. Readings on gender relations, urban environmental change, and the evolution of development thinking will be the focus of class discussions on new ways of interpreting African social and environmental change. 3 hr. sem.