University of the West of England

MODULE SPECIFICATION

(Revised November 2002 )

Code: UPHP5L-30-M Title: Key texts in African History Version: 2

Level: M UWE credit rating: 30 ECTS credit rating:

Module type: Standard

Owning Faculty: Social Sciences and Humanities Field: History

Valid from: September 2008 Discontinued from:

Contributes towards: PG. Cert. PG.Dip MA

Pre-requisites: None

Co-requisites: None

Excluded combinations: None

Learning outcomes:

By the end of the module students will be able to demonstrate:

• an awareness of how African history has developed as a modern academic discipline;

• a familiarity with key canonical texts;

• the ability to recognise the theoretical and methodological contributions of key texts to the development of the field;

• that they are able to discuss and critique these texts and the associated secondary literature;

• the ability to recognise the intellectual traditions from which these texts emerged;

• the ability to apply the theoretical insights of key texts to other areas of historical research, and recognise the problems and advantages of doing this;

• the ability to contextualise their own reading and writing in terms of theoretical approaches and current historiographical debates;

• the ability to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for their own historical research.

Syllabus outline:

1. Introductory session outlining the major developments in the field since 1960.

2. Introductory session on critical reading and the techniques of close textual reading and critical analysis.

3. Sessions dedicated to particular texts and approaches, broadly grouped around the topics of political economy; gender studies; resistance studies; oral history; anthropology and culture.

• Emphasis will be placed on book reviews, review articles, and subsequent texts working within similar frameworks.

• The actual texts to be studied will change over time, as new books come out which influence the field.

4. Concluding session reviewing the field and discussing the future of African historical studies.

Teaching and learning methods:

• Lecture and discussion session introducing each topic and text.

• Workshop sessions involving student presentation and discussion of texts. Some sessions will consider entire books; others will work more slowly through monographs over several weeks. Students will be expected to work individually and in groups to prepare presentations and discussion points for each session.

• Within these sessions, various approaches to writing history will be assessed and criticised, including Marxism, gender studies, discourse theory, narrative, anthropological microhistory and post-modernity.

• Key texts will be read and analysed in depth, to assess their methodology, their effectiveness as accounts of the past, and their contributions to theory.

Indicative sources:

Kwame Anthony Appiah	‘In my father's house: Africa in the philosophy of culture’, (London: Methuen, 1992).
Jean-Francois Bayart	‘The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly’, (London; New York: Longman, 1993).
Martin Chanock	‘Law, custom and social order: the colonial experience in Malawi and Zambia’, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff , eds	Modernity and its malcontents ritual and power in postcolonial Africa, (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
Frederick Cooper	On the African Waterfront: urban disorder and the transformation of work in colonial Mombasa, (London: Yale University Press, 1987).
Frederick Cooper, Ann Laura Stoler, eds	Tensions of empire colonial cultures in a bourgeois world, (Berkeley, California; London: University of California Press, 1997).
Johannes Fabian	Time and the other how anthropology makes its object, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
Steven Feierman	Peasant intellectuals: anthropology and history in Tanzania, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).
Peter Geschiere	The modernity of witchcraft: politics and the occult in postcolonial Africa, (Charlottesville (USA); London: University Press of Virginia, 1997).
Mahmood Mamdani	Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism’, (Kampala: Foundation Publishers; Cape Town: David Philip; London: James Currey, 1996).
V Y Mudimbe	‘The Idea of Africa’, (Bloomington (USA): Indiana University Press; London: James Currey, 1994).
James C. Scott	‘Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance’, (New Haven (USA); London: Yale University Press, 1985).
Leroy Vail, ed	The creation of tribalism in Southern Africa, (London: James Currey, 1989).
Jan Vansina	Oral tradition as History, (London: James Currey, 1985).
Luise White	Speaking with vampires: rumour and history in colonial Africa, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2000).

Assessment

Weighting between components A and B (standard modules at levels 0-3 only) A: 30% B: 70%

ATTEMPT 1

First Assessment Opportunity

Component A

Description of each element Element weighting

1. 2 hr test on key texts in historiographical context 30%

Component B

Description of each element Element weighting

1. Book review, 1,500 words 25%

2. Review article 4 – 5,000 words 45%

Second Assessment Opportunity (further attendance at taught classes is not required)

Component A

Description of each element Element weighting

1. 2 hr test on key texts in historiographical context 30%

Component B

Description of each element Element weighting

1. 6,500 word review article 70%

SECOND (OR SUBSEQUENT) ATTEMPT Attendance at taught classes is required.

Specification confirmed by …………………………………………………Date ……………………………

(Associate Dean/Programme Director)