Fall 2012

Thursday, 10:00am – 12:00pm

This course introduces students to the general outlines of African archeology, history and geography, as well as key concepts in the study of African health, social life , economic situation, arts, and politics. Our aim is to give students a fundamental vocabulary and interdisciplinary methodology for the study of Africa. Throughout, we assume that Africa is not a unique isolate but a continent bubbling with internal diversity, historical change, and cultural connections beyond its shores. The course is open to all students who are interested in exploring various dimensions of African life and cultures in ancient and modern periods.

Credits: Half course

Monday/Wednesday, 12:00pm – 1:00pm

An introduction to African languages and cultures. Explores language use by sub-Saharan Africans to understand, organize, and transmit indigenous knowledge to successive generations. Language serves as a road map to understanding how social, political, and economic institutions and processes develop: from kinship structures, the evolution of political offices, trade relations, to the transfer of environmental knowledge.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 2:00pm – 4:00pm

This course will explore contemporary musical performance and production and their interrelationship with language and digital media in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, and diaspora communities in western Europe and the northeastern United States. Through interdisciplinary course readings and primary source materials (e.g. song lyrics, music videos, photographs, and social media activity), students will investigate questions of genre, authenticity, and power; creolization, hybridity, and purity; and race, gender, and sexuality in this complex cultural domain. Assignments will develop historical, ethnographic, and digital research expertise culminating in a final paper and multimedia project.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

This course will treat the historical and political writings of W. E. B. Du Bois-historian, activist, philosopher, and social theorist, one of the foremost intellectuals of the twentieth century, and arguably the founder of the field of African and African American Studies. From The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America (1896) to The World and Africa (1947), Du Bois traced a course across many of the most important currents of global, black, and intellectual history: Pan-Africanism, Marxism, and Anti-imperialism, in particular.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

In the historic contexts of the civil rights struggles in the United States and the decolonizing liberation struggles in Africa and the Caribbean, this course explores how utopian or emancipatory aspirations in diverse media like literature, popular music, oratory, non-scripted street or community theatre, and popular visual media like poster art, murals, and graffiti impact people of different social classes and backgrounds.

Credits: Half course

Monday, 3:00pm – 5:00pm

This seminar will critically examine the depiction and contextualization of individuals of African descent in European and American art. Among the various issues raised are historic changes in the idea of and construction of race, the impact of early internationalism, notions of difference in the age of exploration, slavery and notions of selfhood, and representation as part of the larger colonial project.

Credits: Half course

Thursday, 4:00pm – 6:00pm

This course is a basic introduction to the history and phenomenology of traditional religions of the African peoples. Using diverse methodological and theoretical approaches, the course will explore various forms of experiences and practices that provide a deep understanding and appreciation of the sacred meaning of African existence: myth, ritual arts, and symbols selected from West, East, Central, and Southern Africa.

Credits: Half course

Monday 12:00pm – 1:30pm; Monday 6:00pm – 7:30pm

: In a story titled Africa Rising (2011), The Economist argued that the continent epitomizes both the “transformative promise of [capitalist ] growth and its bleakest dimensions. This workshop will explore Africa’s changing place in the world – and the new economies, legalities, socialities, and cultural forms that have arisen there. It will also interrogate the claim that the African present is a foreshadowing of processes beginning to occur elsewhere; that, therefore, it is a productive source of theory about current conditions world-wide. The workshop, open to faculty and students, will meet Mondays from 6:00-7:30. 15 students will be permitted to take it as a course; they will also meet on Mondays, 12:00-1:30. Grades will be based on participation and a term essay.

Credits: Half course

Monday 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Students are introduced to major themes, classic texts, and representative current work in the broad interdisciplinary field of African and African American Studies, with a focus on the Humanities (Literature, Art, Music, and Religion).

Credits: Half course

Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00 am- 11:00 am

From the earliest urban and literate civilizations to the formation of empire we shall review the political, economic, and religious beliefs of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians. These early civilizations will then be discussed in the context of the first internationalism that brought them into contact with their near and distant neighbors from eastern Europe to Central Asia, Africa, and South Asia. The political use of the past by modern nation states will be reviewed.

Credits: Half course

Monday, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

This course examines colonialism and the dialectics of modernity on the African continent. Through classic and contemporary ethnography, we consider accounts of “traditional” African culture, especially the centrality accorded to religion, witchcraft and ritual. Rather than approaching these worlds as without history, we track their complex relations to transnational and trans-local forces to the production of new cultural schemes, forms of politics and identity. In doing so, we also attend to processes of decolonization, recent revolutions and the impact of global neoliberalism in the making of the current world order.

Credits: Half course

Tuesday/Thursday, 11:30am – 1:00pm

An engagement with an interdisciplinary set of readings that analyze the relationship between memory and social reconciliation, and the role that theories of truth, justice, and redress play in this equation. We analyze truth commissions, forms of justice, and debates regarding reparations, and the points of conjuncture and disjuncture between national discourses and subaltern concepts of truth, justice, and reconciliation. Case studies include Rwanda, South Africa, Guatemala, Peru, and El Salvador.

Credits: Half course

Monday/Wednesday, 1:00pm- 2:00pm

This course focuses on the method and theory of decipherment, but also considers epistemology and the significance and enduring relevance of ancient writing systems in the modern era. It begins with the distinction between notational, iconographic and phonetic communication-only the latter can truly be considered `writing’ (a linear, graphic record of speech)-and then discusses the various different types of writing systems (including logographic, logosyllabic, syllabic and alphabetic scripts). This is followed by several case studies: the great decipherments (Egyptian, the Cuneiform scripts, Linear B and Mayan); scripts whose languages have become extinct (Etruscan and Meroitic); scripts that remain entirely mysterious (the scripts of Phaistos, the Indus Valley and Easter Island); the major scripts of the Pre-Columbian New World (Zapotec, Isthmian and Aztec writing); and invented scripts from popular literature. Each provides its own unique insights into the enduring and engaging mystery of writing.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 3:00pm – 5:00pm

Readings and research in contemporary Africa.

Credits: Half course

Schedule to be determined.

Credits: Half course

Schedule to be determined.

Junior tutorials in Social Anthropology explore critical theoretical issues related to a single ethnographic region (eg. South Asia, Africa, Latin America). The issues and areas change from year to year, but the purpose remains the same: to give students a chance to grapple with advanced readings and to experience the ways that ideas and theories can be applied and critically analyzed in ethnographic studies.

Credits: Half course

Schedule to be determined.

Credits: Half course

Monday/Wednesday, 12:00pm – 1:00pm

What constitutes an act of resistance? What role do individual beliefs, collective action, public protest, art and literature have in resistance movements? What can the study of resistance teach us about the past and about the world we live in today? This course will explore these questions through case studies drawn from contemporary politics and culture, the apartheid era in South Africa, and Harvard history.

Credits: Half course

Monday/Wednesday, 1:00pm – 2:00pm

What constitutes an act of resistance? What role do individual beliefs, collective action, public protest, art and literature have in resistance movements? What can the study of resistance teach us about the past and about the world we live in today? This course will explore these questions through case studies drawn from contemporary politics and culture, the apartheid era in South Africa, and Harvard history.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

Studies literature and film from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, the Caribbean, Quebec, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Discussions centered on questions of cultural identity, language, postcoloniality, diaspora, trauma and memory.

Credits: Half course

Prerequisite(s): A 50- or 60-level course in French; a score above 780 on the SAT II test or the Harvard Placement test, equivalent preparation, or permission of course head.

Thursday, 2:00pm – 4:00pm

Explores the question of postcolonial identity through the trans-regional study of literature, poetry, cultural works, and critical theory from Africa and the Caribbean. Provides an overview of the major theoretical definitions of the postcolonial in an attempt to find formulations of postcolonial identity not only in terms of aesthetic, but also historical, geographical, linguistic, and institutional discourses. Reading will include “Diaspora Texts” in French and English.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 3:00pm – 5:30pm

What do Muslims think of acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam, the mixing of religion with politics, the rights of women, the “West”? This seminar investigates the viewpoints of prominent Muslim writers on these and other “hot button” issues as reflected in novels, short stories and poetry from different parts of the world. Explores a range of issues facing Muslim communities in various parts of the world by examining the impact of colonialism, nationalism, globalization and politicization of Islam on the search for a modern Islamic identity. Readings of Muslim authors from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Europe and America.

Credits: Half course

Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00am – 11:30am

Provides an introduction to key concepts and theoretical approaches in comparative politics. Major themes include the causes of democratization, economic development, ethnic conflict, and social revolutions; as well as the role of the state, political institutions, and civil society. Examines and critically evaluates different theoretical approaches to politics including modernization, Marxist, cultural, institutionalist, and leadership-centered approaches. Compares cases from Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Latin America to provide students with grounding in the basic tools of comparative analysis.

Credits: Half course

Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00am – 12:00pm

Explores the internal dynamics of West African states from 1800, and West Africa’s relations with the wider world. Examines African perspectives of colonialism, nationalism, and the transfer of political power. Concludes with the study of the continued struggle of independent West African states to achieve economic independence.

Credits: Half course

Tuesday/Thursday, 1:00pm – 2:30pm

A survey of the history of the Near East and North Africa from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the Turkish ascendance in the mid-11th century. Includes Muhammad and his community, Arab conquests, Umayyads and Abbasids, sectarian movements, minority communities, government and religious institutions, and relations with Byzantium and the Latin West.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 2:00pm – 4:00pm

A general introduction to theories of imperialism, nationalism, and post-colonialism. Case studies to include Asia and Africa. Will combine the study of theory with examination of particular anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements.

Credits: Half course

Thursday, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

This course examines relations between European and North African societies, economies, and peoples from the age of “Barbary Piracy” through colonial conquests, anti-colonial nationalism and decolonialization, to post-World War II migrations and reverberations from the “Arab Spring” of 2011. Students will consider crucial turning points in European-North African relations and will write a substantial research paper focusing in on some aspect of Mediterranean history in the modern era.

Credits: Half course

Monday, 3:00pm – 5:00pm

This course examines how French colonial subjects fought back against prejudiced popular images of them as uncivilized, or cultural outsiders. It explores how they represented themselves in contrast to these stereotypes, through popular music, literature, and film. The course places these representations in their historical context. We will examine how they had tangible links to political change, decolonization, and racial tensions in twentieth century France, Africa and the Caribbean.

Credits: Half course

Tuesday, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

The course will explore human migration at several scales, time depths and data sources, including the movement of humans out of Africa and the complex movements of the first farmers across Europe. We will explore the impacts that climates and disease burden have had on human migrations, and discuss recent movements of people and the reasons for migratory behavior in humans. in addition, a personal migration story will be developed by the class.

Credits: Half course

Wednesday, 1:00pm – 3:00pm

Examines the causes of the 2010-2011 Arab uprisings, the subsequent political transformations in the Middle East and North Africa and the prospects for democratic transitions.

Credits: Half course

Tuesday/Thursday, 11:40am – 1:00pm

Food and farming systems around the world are heavily shaped by government policy. The challenges governments face in this area range from widespread undernutrition in poor countries to a growing obesity crisis in wealthy countries. Skewed ownership of agricultural land and inadequate infrastructure are persistent sources of rural poverty and social inequity. Unsustainable environmental damage from agriculture takes place in both low-yield farming systems (e.g., in Africa today) and in high-yield systems (e.g., in the United States and Europe). Government policies often distort food markets in poor countries by taxing farmers and subsidizing consumers, while in rich countries they typically do just the opposite. New cultural demands for organic, local, and slow foods encounter resistance from the conventional food and farming sector. Climate change threatens the future productivity of many important farming systems. This course will review the economic and political landscape of food and farming in both rich and poor countries. It emphasizes the durable importance of national governments and national policy making, plus the significant influence of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), multinational food and agribusiness companies, and various international NGOs ranging from humanitarian relief and advocacy organizations, to social entrepreneurs and philanthropic foundations.

Credits: 1.00

Tuesday/Thursday, 2:40pm – 4:00pm

This course examines some of the great diplomatic achievements since the end of the Cold War – the fall of communism, the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the Gulf War Coalition, the Dayton Peace Agreement, the Peru-Ecuador Boarder Dispute, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Iran and North Korea nuclear challenge, and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Through investigation of these ten case studies, we seek to determine the key elements present in producing both success and failure in contemporary diplomacy and negotiations. Can we learn to place greater value in diplomacy as a key weapon in our national security strategy? Can the U.S. and the rising powers work together to rebuild international institutions to cope with transnational challenges–regional wars, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change? Why has diplomacy been successful in stopping war and creating stability in some regions, such as the Balkans, and so unsuccessful elsewhere as in Iraq and Afghanistan? The course studies how diplomacy is changing in our own time including major roles for the NGOs and international institutions in global governance. Students will develop diplomatic, political, and presentational skills necessary for professional success in government, the NGO world, and the private sector. Students are expected to have done all readings before each class, to participate actively in class discussions, and will be given the opportunity to lead class discussions on specific crises and diplomatic assignments. Enrollment limited.

Credits: 1.00

Monday, 10:00am – 1:00pm

This seminar course will deal with `modern housing’ covering a period primarily from 1990 to the present. It will engage with `urban districts’ in so far as housing projects under discussion contribute to the making of these districts, or are shaped by the districts in which they are placed. Examples will also be drawn from different cultural contexts with emphases on Europe, North America and East Asia, although also including examples from Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. The course will begin with discussion of several broad topics germane to design issues in contemporary housing, including ideas of community and what constitutes a dwelling community from various cultural perspectives; territories and types dealing with underlying urban conditions that play host to contemporary housing; interior and other landscapes that chart the diversity of contemporary living circumstances, as well as notions of flexibility, specialization and polyfunctionality; and expressive and representational issues particularly concerning place specific and inherently situated aspects of existence alongside of dynamic, perennially future-oriented dimensions of living. This broad topical discussion will be followed by case studies, roughly pairing underlying urban conditions and characteristics with architectural projects. Within each case study theme particular contemporary examples will provide the primary focus, although others will be introduced to flesh out necessary historical circumstances and lineages of housing development. These topics will include: urban block shapers, tall towers, housing in urban landscapes, superblock configurations, big buildings and submultiples, infrastructural engagements, infill interventions, indigenous reinterpretations, and the housing of special populations. Concluding discussion will examine various dimensions across projects and urban conditions in part to identify strengths and weaknesses but also to set contemporary housing aside from that of modern housing in prior eras. Student participation will be by way of attendance, discussion and especially case study presentation and documentation.

Credits: 4.00

Tuesday/Wednesday, 3:20pm – 4:50pm

This course will cover a series of topics arising in the comparative study of constitutional structure and law in countries including Canada, Colombia, Great Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, South Africa, and the United States. It will take up questions of constitutional purpose, function, design, and doctrine.

Credits: 3.00

Monday, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

4 credits F/S; 2 credits F; or 2 credits S
1 or 2 optional writing credits
In this Workshop Course, law students will be included as active participants in the inaugural year of the annual Harvard Africa Workshop (HAW), a University-wide interdisciplinary seminar which will be convened by Faculty of Arts and Sciences Professors John and Jean Comaroff, internationally renowned South African anthropologists and critical social theorists.
The HAWs intellectual theme for the first three years, 2012-2015, is to be Africa and the World at Large: Or, What the New Global Order Has to Learn from the Contemporary Africa. Within this broad theme, the specific focus for 2012-13 will be Changing Economies, Changing Polities, Changing Faces of Capitalism. The subsequent years foci are to be (ii) State Transformations, Social Order, and the Problem of Crime, and (iii) Health and Crises of Reproduction.
To explore the 2012-13 theme, leading scholars of international repute will present weekly papers that address the rapidly changing position of Africa in the global political economy and the impact of that change on global distributions of wealth, well-being, and power. Participating scholars tentatively include Professors Duncan Kennedy and Christine Desan from the Law School; Professors Emmanuel Akyeampong and Caroline Elkins from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (History); Professor Robert Bates from Harvard FAS (Government); and Professors Achille Mbembe (University of the Witwatersrand), James Ferguson (Stanford), and Hlonipa Mokoena (Columbia).
The HAW is an interdisciplinary initiative which will be comprised of this Law School Workshop, a seminar in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, a professional apprenticeship for doctoral Africanists-in-training across the disciplines, and a laboratory for international scholarly exchange. The Law School Workshop will meet simultaneously with the HAW throughout the academic year, i.e., for weekly two-hour paper presentations, preceded by one-hour preparation meetings for the law and graduate students. The HAW initiative is designed to cultivate a spirit of engaged, constructive critique and inter-generational mentorship.
Students may register for the Law School Workshop for either the Fall (2 credits), Spring (2 credits) or Fall and Spring (4 credits). Requirements for each semester include reading each paper and participating actively in each weeks discussion; attending the weekly one-hour student preparation meetings preceding each paper session; writing two to three page response papers on two HAW seminar papers; and writing a final twenty page paper on a course theme. Students may register for additional writing credit(s) in conjunction with the course.

Credits: 2.00

Monday/Tuesday, 8:30am – 10:00am

This is a three-credit course. This course is about the protection of socio-economic rights, such as the rights to healthcare, food, housing, social security, and education. It will address the foundations and historical origins of socio-economic rights, examine and critically assess some of the objections (legal, philosophical and economical) that have been raised to such rights, and consider efforts to protect socio-economic rights through international, regional and national human rights mechanisms. Drawing upon the experience in national courts of selected countries, such as South Africa, India, the United States and Ireland, it will then consider the adjudication of socio-economic rights. This part of the course will look at issues of justiciability, separation of powers and remedies. Finally, the course will look at socio-economic rights and social change.

Credits: 3.00

Thursday, 4:00pm – 6:00pm

This course is a basic introduction to the history and phenomenology of traditional religions of the African peoples. Using diverse methodological and theoretical approaches, the course will explore various forms of experiences and practices that provide a deep understanding and appreciation of the sacred meaning of African existence: myth, ritual arts, and symbols selected from West, East, Central, and Southern Africa. Offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as AAAS 187.

Credits: 0.50

Monday, 2:00pm – 4:00pm

This course examines black Pentecostal women across the globe, attending to issues of female religious authority, identity formation, community production, music, and domestic/public spheres. In so doing, the course will unpack gendered and regional particularities of Pentecostalism’s appeal, its intersection with configurations of gender, race, and class, its impact on women’s lives, and the local, regional, and global implications of its growth and influence. Case studies include the Americas, Caribbean, and Africa.

Credits: 0.50

Tuesday/Thursday, 1:00pm – 2:30pm

A survey of the history of the Near East and North Africa from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the Turkish ascendance in the mid-11th century. Includes Muhammad and his community, Arab conquests, Umayyads and Abbasids, sectarian movements, minority communities, government and religious institutions, and relations with Byzantium and the Latin West. Offered jointly with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as History 1877a.

Credits: 0.50

Tuesday, 5:30pm – 7:30pm

This course examines the fossil, genetic, and archaeological record of human evolution, providing a comprehensive survey of our biological and behavioral changes from early australopithecines to the emergence of modern humans. In order to understand the unique aspects of human success, there is a rich comparative field of work across several disciplines within human evolutionary biology that looks at how evolution has shaped our particular physical and mental capabilities. Important topics to be covered include hominin interactions with changing environments, bipedality, increased brain size, tool use, social behavior, other physical and behavioral adaptations, and the geographic expansions of hominins out of Africa. The course provides a fundamental understanding of evolutionary theory and its relevance for studying the human past. The course briefly addresses the earlier developments in primate evolution before the appearance of lineages directly ancestral to humans. The majority of the course examines the emergence, biological changes, and adaptations of the australopithecines and the genus Homo over the last 4 million years. Human evolution not only addresses where our species came from in the past. It helps us understand how evolution has shaped the organisms we are now, negotiating rapid environmental, dietary, health, and behavioral changes that are novel challenges to the conditions our bodies and brains developed to confront.

Credits: 4

Wednesday, 5:30pm – 7:30pm

The objectives of the course are to enhance our understanding of the economies of the world and their interdependence, and to analyze changing global financial and trade systems. The course includes issues related to country analyses, and economic and financial integration. It discusses different policies of the United States, China, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, and South Africa. It analyzes various models of integration such as the European Union, North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, and currency union. The recent global credit and currency crisis including sovereign risk is discussed as well. The course examines the dynamism of the global financial and economic environment that businesses face. Prerequisite: introductory economics at the college level.

Credits: 4

Wednesday, 5:30pm – 7:30pm

This course analyzes developments in, and controversies about, the study of world history to AD 200. Topics include theories of cosmic beginnings and the beginning of life; Africa and theories of human origins; material and agricultural development and diffusion in Eurasia; ancient Egypt and Nubia; Mesopotamian, Harappan, and Western Hemispheric civilizations; the beginnings of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism; the unification of China; the Bible as historical source; foundations of ancient Greek thought and culture; the Roman Republic; and origins of Judaism and Christianity.

Credits: 4