HIS 131 - Modern Africa - Professor Christolyn Williams: Pathways to Research

Major Timeline Markers - Events 

Kinship - Kingships - Empires (Tribes)

Religion - Islamic Africa; Christian Africa

Independence Movements & Decolonization/Reconfiguration 

Wars - Insurgencies - Terrorism

Ideologies - Pan-Africanism, Post-Colonialism, Socialism, Aparthied 

Social & Economic

• Population studies  
• Gender 
• Education
• Stateless, displaced persons and minority groups
• Agriculture & Environment
• Tourism
• Natural Resources 
• Poverty, Famine, Disease 
• Global economies - exports, transnational business
• Microeconomies
• Access to technology

A Geography or Region - Sub-Saharan, West/East Coast

Interactions with Colonizers - French, German, Dutch, British 

Leaders and Thinkers  - Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Shaka Zulu 

Considerations for Researchers: 

• "No single periodizaton" (Middleton, New Encyclopedia of Africa) of African history. This means the European/Colonial way of looking at history by century may not apply.  
  
• Historiography and Resources affected by Eurocentric Dominance and Racisim:
  • ​African Historiography Challenges
  • Dorothy Porter: Cataloging Black Knowledge
     
• Eurocentric Re-telling of the History of Civilization ("Black Athena" theory - Martin Bernal). There has been a lack of scholarly focus on Africa and in the Historical Canon. What did historians miss? 
   

CONSULT A TIMELINE. 

CONSULT A REFERENCE WORK FOR INFORMATION ON A PERSON, COUNTRY, EVENT, ETHNIC GROUP, CONFLICT, ETC: