HIST 373 African Urban History
This course aims to provide students with a comprehensive approach to urban African history. To avoid fashioning an understanding of this history that often equates urbanization with westernization, this course begins with an examination of the multiple precolonial urban centers which existed in Africa prior to the arrival of the Europeans. It continues with the onset of colonialism and industrialisation which affected both the pace and nature of urbanisation in Africa. Migrations to the cities transformed the lives of millions of Africans. This course will focus on the lives of these urban dwellers: their relations to the spaces in which they live and the influence of those spaces on them; the development of urban cultures; the gendered character of urbanization; the creation of new social, political, economic and criminal networks; conflict and cooperation amongst urbanites; and the nature of colonial and post colonial oppression and control in the cities.
Credits
3
Offered
Every other year