HST 151 - African Independence & Liberation

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meet general academic requirements HU and DE.
Meets Explore Core requirement (students beginning Fall 2024 and later): HS and GP
This course will examine the long struggle for African liberation from the impact of colonial rule, an intellectual and political movement spanning the twentieth century into the present day. In the early 1960s, the map of Africa transformed. After decades of European colonial rule, newly independent African nations raised national flags, elected independent governments, and launched a new era. Despite the gaining of political independence across much of Africa, however, many questions remained for Africans about how to confront the ongoing impact of colonialism on their societies. Even after independence, European countries continued to exert significant political and economic power in African countries, and African communities continued to live with the racialized global inequities that colonialism produced. In recent decades, Africans have been asserting the ongoing need for “decolonization” or liberation in areas spanning African literature, international political economy, museums, global public health, and the university. This course will explore how African intellectuals, artists, political figures, and everyday people shaped the formation of independent African nations-states, debated the meaning of independence from colonial rule, and continued to struggle for liberation in all facets of society. Examining this topic through a variety of angles including politics, economics, gender, and language, this course will provide students with an interdisciplinary introduction to major themes in modern African history.