Africa Mediterranean World

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course relies on art, philosophy, and historical primary sources to explore longstanding connections between the people of present day Europe and Africa, from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular emphasis on the period of colonial entanglement during the 19th and 20th centuries. Methodologically, we will reconsider “area studies” approaches, and think about the ways in which ideas, materials, and people moved through regional networks to co-create a modern world routed through cosmopolitanism. Such interconnections are evidenced from paintings in the Uffizi Gallery to the front pages of Italian newspapers: the African presence in Europe is pronounced, and vice-versa. At the same time, the psychic space that animated countless imaginative or physical departures in the creative humanities is also essential to understanding how race, geography, and cultural meaning are all produced through relation rather than separateness.