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| Semester | fall semester 2021 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | Lorena Rizzo (lorena.rizzo@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This course looks at the lives and experiences of ‘women’ in African history, between the 17th and the 20th century. Hereby we anticipate that the category of ‘woman’ is a social and cultural construct, which needs to be reflected historically and against the backdrop of contemporary concerns with non-binary and gender theoretical propositions. The course considers prominent and powerful ‘women’, among them royal dignitaries, members of colonial elites, intellectuals or writers, as well as disempowered and disenfranchised female slaves, workers, and rural dwellers. The ‘women’s’ lives and experiences will take us on a journey through West, East, Central and Southern Africa, and we will consider them in ways that situate these ‘women’ in the social, political, and cultural worlds they inhabited, while at the same time preserving the possibility of their originality and individuality to emerge. We pay attention to how the lives and experiences of historical subjects emerge from the archive, how they are narrated and mediated – through archival sources authored by missionaries, colonial officers, adventures and researchers; how these lives and experiences are made and remade in autobiographical narratives produced by African ‘women’ themselves; how they are represented through visual forms and media such as historical photographs, etchings, paintings, and films; or constituted in the narratives produced by contemporary historians. The visual in particular will allow us to explore how some African women from the past have developed remarkable afterlives across a wide range of political, cultural and aesthetic practices by which contemporary African societies negotiate memory and historical consciousness. We are, in short, interested in African women’s lives as lived, narrated and transformed. The course will provide opportunities for exploring African women’s and gender history through some of the most interesting historical scholarship, but it will more importantly focus on close ‘readings’ of written and visual archival sources. Films, graphic arts and exhibits will take us into the domain of public history. |
| Bibliography | Nancy Rose Hunt, The Affective, The Intellectual, and Gender History. The Journal of African History, 55, 3, 2014: 331-345. Keguro Macharia, Archive and Method in Queer African Studies. Agenda, 103/29 (1), 2015: 140-146. Marc Epprecht, Sexuality, Africa, History. American Historical Review, Forum, 114, 5, 2009: 1258-1272. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Thursday | 10.00-12.00 | Rheinsprung 21, Seminarraum 00.004 |
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday 23.09.2021 | 09.00-12.00 | Rheinsprung 21, Seminarraum 00.004 |
| Thursday 07.10.2021 | 09.00-12.00 | Rheinsprung 21, Seminarraum 00.004 |
| Thursday 02.12.2021 | 09.00-12.00 | Rheinsprung 21, Seminarraum 00.004 |
| Saturday 18.12.2021 | 10.00-16.00 | Rheinsprung 21, Seminarraum 00.004 |
| Modules |
Modul: Areas: Afrika (Master's degree program: European History in Global Perspective) Modul: Aufbau Neuere / Neueste Geschichte (Bachelor's degree subject: History) Modul: Basics: History (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Media and Imagination (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Neuere / Neueste Geschichte (Master's degree subject: History) Modul: Sachthemen der Ethnologie (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul: Themenfelder der Geschlechterforschung (Bachelor's degree subject: Gender Studies) Modul: Theory and General Anthropology (Master's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul: Vertiefung Themenfelder der Geschlechterforschung (Master's degree subject: Gender Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Zentrum für Afrikastudien |