PROGRAM OF AFRICAN STUDIES

History of Africans and African-descended people throughout Latin America from 1492 to 1800, emphasizing the varied experiences of slavery and freedom struggles, the emergence of race and colonial categories of difference, and the gendered lives of racialized colonial subjects.

A survey of the cultures of Africa and the significant similarities and differences among the indigenous societies of the continent.

This first segment of the three-quarter first-year course facilitates students' learning of the alphabet and sound system, and helps them develop basic speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. It also introduces students to the diglossic sociolinguistic environment of the Arab World, and provides exposure to basic, high frequency regional spoken variety elements. This course is designed for true beginners with no previous background in the language. Students with any background must take a placement test and consult with the Coordinator before enrolling.

This first segment of the three-quarter first-year course facilitates students' learning of the alphabet and sound system, and helps them develop basic speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. It also introduces students to the diglossic sociolinguistic environment of the Arab World, and provides exposure to basic, high frequency regional spoken variety elements. This course is designed for true beginners with no previous background in the language. Students with any background must take a placement test and consult with the Coordinator before enrolling.

Speaking and understanding the way Egyptians speak in everyday life is a major goal of this course. In this course students will intensively practice speaking and master the use of colloquial Arabic for everyday oral communication. They will learn about the intricacies of diglossic sociolinguistic situations through the specific example of Egypt. Students will become familiar with important cultural themes in Egyptian society that inform individual and collective behavior. Students will learn to analyze similarities and differences between formal, written Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and the spoken regional Egyptian dialect. They will also gain valuable insights into Egyptian language and culture, laying important groundwork for more successful study abroad or work abroad experiences. Although the focus of the course is building verbal and conversational skills in Egyptian Arabic, a "contrastive analysis" and "comparative dialectology" between spoken dialects and MSA will be discussed in a systematic way.

This first part of the three-quarter second-year course is a continuation of Arabic I, and moves students forward in all modes of language use, including additional exposure to representative regional spoken varieties, work on more sophisticated written expression and reading abilities for higher level/more abstract types of texts.

This is a high intermediate level course in Modern Standard Arabic. Our goal is to enhance the student's ability to read, understand and discuss Arabic writings utilizing a variety of newspaper, magazine and journal articles, documents, short stories and other materials of interest to the students and relevant to their field of study. In addition to focusing on developing reading and writing skills, a special emphasis is placed on listening and speaking:
Listening:
Improve your listening comprehension of: authentic audio/video texts both in Ammiya and MSA. By the end of this quarter I expect you to comprehend main points / ideas. By the end of the school year ( the three class sequence of 211), I expect you to understand thoroughly the more familiar topics and recognize main ideas of news bulletins.
Speaking:
have enough spoken and MSA Arabic vocab and idioms that make you able to hold conversations with native Arabic speakers on basic topics and some cultural topics. By the end of the course you will have improved your pronunciation ( clarity and intonation ) as well. You will also be more familiar with the differences between the few formal settings of using MSA as spoken Arabic and everyday spoken Arabic dialects.

This course offers a valuable chance to students who want to explore Arabic literary prose in depth. It also provides foundational skills for students who want to pursue graduate careers in Arabic literature or Middle Eastern Studies. The course will survey excerpts and selections of Arabic literary prose with emphasis on different styles of writing and editing of literature from the early 20th century to the present. The emphasis will be on studying elements, forms, writing styles, characteristics, development and prominent authors of essays, reflections, short stories, biographies, novels, and plays. The linguistic textual analysis of each reading will focus on: (1) understanding advanced grammatical structures, syntax and style; (2) rapid acquisition of vocabulary and popular idioms (e.g. gender manifestations) through in-class discussions and oral presentations; (3) writing assignments that reflect students' abilities to understand and assimilate the texts. We will work intensively on improving reading-for-comprehension skills, composition, listening and speaking through in-class oral discussions and presentations. Special exercises will be developed to improve understanding and use of essential elements of rhetorical analysis of literary works and applying them to the texts we read in class.

This course uses interdisciplinary and intersectional methods to study the representations of race in African literatures from different linguistic and racial backgrounds. The role of translation (inter-lingual and cultural) in the depiction of race will be central to our discussions. We will read texts originally written in Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese and indigenous African languages to examine how writers come to terms with the idea of race. Who is an African and who is not? Is race biological or socially constructed? How are non-black races (e.g. Arabs, white, Indians etc.) represented in African writing? How is the "black" in Africa different or similar to "black" in other parts of the world? How do "black aesthetics" and "black arts" in Africa differ from similar concepts in black-diaspora cultures? How does racism intersect with other forms of oppression in African societies? How are internal racisms represented in African contexts? How are representations of race in canonical writing (e.g., Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice) treated in African translations and allusions to those texts? Performing both distant and close readings of African writers, we will read primary texts in terms of the techniques individual artists use to treat race matters. Theory texts will include excerpts from well-known works on the black race by Hegel, Descartes, Kant, Fanon, Memmi as well as newer African and African-diaspora engagements with these texts by such scholars as Charles Mills, Emmanuel Eze, Achille Mbembe, Toni Morrison, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Stuart Hall.

20th-century African literature in English. Content varies. May be repeated for credit with different topic.  

Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story "The Purloined Letter" provided the impetus for a fascinating theoretical and philosophical debate in the late 70s between Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Barbara Johnson. At the center of the polemic were the questions of reading, of teleology, of destiny, and of signification. In other words, the ways in which crime, detecting, the law, and meaning circulate in this story made for a fertile ground for thinking literature and the enterprise of interpretation. The debate is revealing not only because of the ways in which each theorist reads the short story but also how each reads the other's reading and engages with its implications. In this course, we will begin by reading the texts of this polemic together with Poe's story as a kind of portal that will orient us in our own acts of reading as we make our way through a number of works by Francophone writers from Africa. Our readings will by no means be limited by the terms of this debate, nor will we merely apply its conceptual framework to them. Instead, we will allow the debate to provide us with a certain vocabulary as well as the opening questions that we will then pursue through the vicissitudes of each literary works. The organizing principle of the course is therefore not thematic. Rather, the debate about Poe's story will help us attend to literature as a question and reflect on practices of reading.

Social, economic, ethical, and cultural influences on variation in human health and well-being in populations worldwide; the continuum between health and sickness and the related impact of distal, chronic, and acute forces.

Emphasis on the 20th century, the rise of African nationalism, and the clash with the apartheid state.

 Students research and complete a term paper on a topic of choice. Required of majors.

Intensive seminars in cutting-edge research on interdisciplinary issues. Course number indicates distribution requirement area in which a course counts. May be repeated for credit with change in topic.

Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the Middle East and North Africa. Content varies with annual theme. May be repeated for credit with a change in topic. Courses need not be taken in sequence.

Content and prerequisites vary. Course number indicates distribution requirement area in which a course counts. May be repeated for credit with change of topic.

Analysis of changes in the world economy and their implications for politics, economics, and society. Politics of multinational production, finance, and trade in the context of governance problems in a globalizing world. Prerequisite: 240 or equivalent.

Development of international human rights. Comparative state and regional responses to forced migration due to war, conflict, and generalized violence. Humanitarian intervention, international law, and policy issues, such as gender-based violence, migrants at sea, and human trafficking.

This course will bring together Medill and Weinberg students with an interest in the politics and practices of reporting on Islam and Muslims in the United States and in U.S. foreign policy. Through a combination of readings, site visits, individual and group projects, and critical writing assignments, the goals of this course are, first, to empower students to recognize the pitfalls of how Islam and Muslims are reported and represented in U.S. print media and other formats, and second, to innovate new ways of writing about Islam and Muslims that do not replicate the Islamophobic or Islamophilic tropes that dominate much of this reporting. To these ends, the course will include a ?master class' on reporting religion led by by Manya Brachear, religion reporter for the Chicago Tribune. The course is part of the "Talking ?Religion': Publics, Politics and the Media" project which is co-directed by the instructors, and students will have an opportunity to participate in project related activities including lectures and a spring 2019 workshop.

This graduate-level seminar explores contemporary Islamic political thought with a special focus on Islamic political thinkers and ideas from the early twentieth century to the present. The objectives of the course are to assist students to : (1) acquire advanced knowledge and understanding of the core themes and concepts of Islamic political thought and ideas and their recent reconfigurations ; (2) grasp the complexity and variety of islamic intellectual trends, debates and arguments and their contexts ; 3) engage in critical reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources of Islamic Thought ; 4) prepare a piece of original research.

Introduction to issues of cities and metropolitan areas, including spatial, economic, and political trends; private and public decision making; class, race, and gender; and possible solutions to inequalities and planning challenges.

This is the first part of a three-quarter sequence of beginning Swahili. The course equips learners with the necessary listening, speaking, reading and writing skills so as to understand basic Swahili. We shall learn about the history of Swahili language, its place in East Africa, and discuss how to interact with Swahili speakers in culturally appropriate ways. Through a combination of lectures, lab sessions and performance of cultural and communicative activities, learners will gain an understanding of basic Swahili grammatical structures and cultural insights of the people of East Africa. No prior knowledge of Swahili is required to enroll in this course.