Ghana: Africa is People
Delve into Africa’s diverse histories, societies and cultures, questioning historical representations and exploring the vibrant, complex narratives of the continent.
Program overview
Application deadline
October 1
Duration
Spring semester course with one week of spring break travel
Course number
AFSP 2205 + 2207
Credits
- 3 + 1
Eligibility
Sophomores to seniors
Students with a deep interest in Africa who are prepared to do demanding study and fieldwork in Ghana.
SFS students with backgrounds in African studies and no prior c-lab participation will be given priority.
Course overview
What is Africa to you? How should Africa be written? How should Africa not be written? These fundamental questions are among other crucial questions informing the direction of this class, where the world’s second-largest continent, Africa—humankind’s cradle—will be at the center of our discussions. We will contend with the historical representations of Africa, its peoples, societies, and cultures and what it means to imagine Africa in the contemporary moment. In doing so, we will not just leave the representation of Africa as a geographic tragedy but rather as a complex space that has long teemed with a human vibrancy that enabled the peopling of the world.
We will conduct a field visit to Ghana to familiarize ourselves with the country’s sociocultural and political-economic environments. We hope that the visit will allow you to use Ghana as a pinhole through which to fathom the myriad afterlives of slavery and colonization in postcolonial Ghana. Specifically, the visit will offer you the opportunity to engage with the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of Ghana through the experiences of Ghanaians themselves. Primarily, we are interested in affording you the chance to understand how Ghanaians, and Africans more broadly, imagine and interact with the complex sociocultural environments resulting from the historical legacies of slavery and colonization. These engagements will serve as gateways for you to not only study Ghana but also to learn from Ghanaians writ large. This taste of Ghana would offer you a renewed critical understanding of the African continent.
Itinerary highlights
Black Star Square; W. E. B. Du Bois Center; Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum; Nkyinkyim Contemporary Museum; Shai Hills Reserve; Cape Coast; Kakum National Park; Elmina Castle; Java Museum.
Professor Kwame Edwin Otu
Kwame Edwin Otu is an Associate Professor in the African Studies Program at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Otu is a cultural anthropologist with interests ranging from the politics of sexual, environmental, and technological citizenships and public health to their intersections with shifting racial formations in neocolonial and neoliberal Africa and the African Diaspora.