HIST 180 PZ -Spirits/Science/Nature of Africa

In 1937, Nnamdi Azikiwe, an editor, Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and future president of Nigeria, posed a prescient question, versions of which scholars and activists still grapple with today: he asked, was it correct to call Africans’ knowledge “superstition,” or might it better be labeled “super-science”? “If an African would only study the science of the West,” he continued, “and try to correlate the same with African science, an important contribution could be made to the studies of science.” Eighty years on, historian Clapperton Mavhunga engages similar questions but in ways that center what is scientific and technological about African systems of thought and practice, including how myths and spirituality serve as abstractions, anchors, inspirations, and drivers of scientific reason in African contexts (2017).

This course will pick up these threads and examine the historical interplay of endogenous and exogenous influences in how people have conceptualized and experienced African environments over the last 150 years. What epistemological framings or philosophies have shaped and changed ecological thinking and praxis across the continent? What systems of knowledge have people drawn on and contested when engaging with natural resources and environmental crises? Who or what institutions maintain these knowledge systems, and why have some become dominant and circulate while others put down deep, local roots? Why would dissenting or subaltern knowledges and methods persist in many spaces while they disappear in others? To explore these questions, this course will attend to “the changing and porous boundaries” between global science and vernacular knowledges throughout histories of “cross-cultural interpenetration” (Tilley, 2010).

Prerequisite(s): See the current course schedule for registration restrictions.

For up-to-date information on current course offerings and details, please refer to the Pitzer class schedule on MyCampus2 Portal .