Urban Africa. (3 h)

Examines how urban residents have worked to creatively shape some of sub-Saharan Africa’s major transformations. Major topics include the social and cultural fabric of pre-colonial African cities, the impact of colonialism on African towns, cities as sites of revolution and independence, and the contemporary conditions and challenges facing urban residents. While popular imagination suggests that the African past is largely a rural one, many of the continents’ most explosive social and cultural transformations have taken place in its cities. (CD)