Thinking Historically about Africa: Introduction to African Historiography

How do historians think about Africa? This course is intended to introduce students to the key debates, themes, and frameworks that have shaped the study of African history over the course of the past century. Following an introduction to historiographical analysis—a key skill for any student planning on continuing to graduate level studies, the course will be conducted as a reading and discussion seminar. In this class, we will cover major shifts in historical thinking about Africa, reading selections from a variety of scholarship that have been influential in the field of African history. Students will then read a recent monograph on African history of their choice and analyze it in the context of the historiography of the field.

Jodie Marshall (PhD, Michigan State University) is a historian of transnationalism on the East African coast. Her research examines the history of migration between the Arabian Peninsula and the Zanzibari Archipelago from the 19th century to the 21st./