Here is a relevant class (Spring 2015) for people interested in Africa and needing gen-ed: Spring 2015: Geography of Africa (DGES 4853), TR 12-1:15, SEC 201 Dr. Bret Wallach What does the phrase the geography of Africa bring to mind? For many people (I speak from experience), the question invites a question in reply, one such as “What’s the capital of Burkina Faso?” (The on-point reply is “Ouagadougou, of course, but what was Burkina Faso called until 1984?” For full marks you reply, Upper Volta.) The conversation usually expires at this point, but it can rise to game-show-championship heights. “What is the name of the protuberance that sticks from the Democratic Republic of the Congo halfway into Zambia? (“The Congo Pedicle.”) What is that weird little arm sticking east from the top end of Namibia?” (The Caprivi Strip, named for Count Leo von Caprivi, Bismarcks successor, etc. etc., etc.) For other people the phrase “geography of Africa” brings to mind questions from physical geography. “Name the branches of the Nile” (the White and Blue). If you pass that hurdle, youre asked to “name their sources (Lakes Victoria and Tana, unless youre a committed fetishist about these things.) There’s the easy one about Africas highest peak (Kilimanjaro, of course) and, a bit more challenging, the highest peak within a hundred miles of Africas Atlantic Coast. (That would be Mt. Cameroon.) Impatient people who know the value of money will rebuke us for indulging in such trivia. They want to know the facts of economic geography. What is the mineral that exists in prodigious quantities in the Simandou region of Guinea? (Iron ore.) What is the mineral whose attempted extraction from the Tete Basin of Mozambique has swallowed a ton of money, along with the careers of at least one corporate bigwig? (Coal, and the head of Tom Albanese of Rio Tinto.) What undeveloped site has the greatest hydropower potential on the continent? (Inge, on the lower Congo, but dont hold your breath). How does landlocked South Sudan hope to lower the cost of imports and exports? (With a new port near Lamu, off the coast of Kenya.) Why is South Africa no longer attracting aluminum producers? (Because for years to come the power they need is going to be allocated to residential customers off the grid while apartheid prevailed). A politically oriented group of equally impatient people will ask about geopolitics. Liberia up; Libya down; Angola steady—though as Zimbabwe suggests that’s not always a point in a country’s favor.) Theyll want to know about Boko Haram, al Shabab, and the linkages between them, al Qaeda, and al Qaedas franchises. Theyre likely to be drawn into questions about Africas colonial legacy. What was good about it, if anything? They will ask about tribes, languages, religions. They will ask about population growth (Nigeria with 900 million people in 2100? Really? Thats one possibility, according to a recent UN projection.) What Sub-Saharan country has the UN’s highest “human development” ranking? (Botswana.) Which is Africa’s least corrupt country? (Surprise! Botswana again, according to Transparency International.) They’ll want to know about efforts to improve village life. (How about the Millennium Development Goals? They got so much publicity a few years ago; what’s happened since then?) And how about what the continent looks like, not just the Nile as it pours through its upper cataracts but how Accra looks, say, or how British-derived Nairobi contrasts with German Dar or Portuguese Maputo. There’s even a question about how these places feel—rural places too, not just urban ones—and not just to tourists but to residents rich and poor, now and in the past. Impatient souls will start tapping their fingers at such matters, but impatient souls don’t rule the world completely (yet). This course is a reading-heavy exploration of all these topics. Textbooks, avaunt! So, too, the dozen paperbacks that once would have been required. Instead, we bravely enter the digital world of books excerpted to d2l. Here’s a sample of recent titles coming up for sure: Sundaram’s Stringer (grim reporting from the DRC), Godwin’s The Fear (Zimbabwe), French’s China’s Second Continent (for us the bit on Zambia), Saro-Wiwa’s Looking for Transwonderland (Nigeria), Akpan’s “An Exmas Feast,” (a from-the-lower-depths short story about a family in a Nairobi slum), Malan’s “The Last Boer,” (an essay about an elderly abandoned Boer in Tanzania), and Meyers Cobra (a recent Afrikaans but also polyglot crime novel) . These are all post-colonial, though we will dip into the colonial experience, too, with Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom (the bits about his youth) and Nkrumah’s Ghana (ditto), as well as the European perspective, with Thesiger’s A Life of My Own (Sudan), and Huxley’s Nellie: Letters from Africa (Kenya). Wish we had time to sample Voigts Sixty Years in East Africa (a German perspective), but we’ll definitely work with online reference works and periodical articles on political and economic topics. Mustn’t forget looking at pictures, too, as well as the wealth of stuff buried in Google Earth. Questions about the course, mundane or lofty, may be sent to the instructor, [email protected]
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 17:55:05 +0000
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