Historiography of Africa

This colloquium is intended to introduce Ph.D. students from History and related fields to contemporary Africanist historiography. The genealogies of the field are multiple and distinct. However, rather than trace those genealogies from their distinctive points of origin, the course examines some of the key characteristics and problematics of Africanist historical production over the last generation. Signal elements of Africanist historiography that we will explore include: the tension between historical analysis and work produced in the frame of other social sciences, particularly ethnography, and/or work that engages with the colonial library; the variable weight accorded Africa’s deeper or ‘pre-colonial’ past in contemporary historical analysis (i.e., the balance between historicity and historicism); the privileged place of methodologies, particularly in oral history, within the historiography; the changing relationship between word, text, and object as sources of knowledge about the recent African past; the circumscription of the religious within the rational.

The colloquium offers an historiographic review that will allow us to gain our bearings in Africanist historical production, and it is intended to enable future critical reading of Africanist work and awareness of the strengths and limitations of the field.