Goals and Objectives of the Major in Africology
The basic mission of the Department of Africology is rigorous, critical inquiry pertaining to the cultures, societies and political economies of peoples of primary African origin and their descent. The subject matter of Africology coheres national, cross-national, transgenerational and universal phenomena into discrete categories which, when scrutinized closely, open to students a variety of insights concerning the societies and cultures of Africans and their descendants.
The major in Africology is thus designed to give students optimum flexibility within a framework of carefully crafted requirements. Prospective majors must take a total of 36 credits to complete the major. Every student majoring in Africology must take one course each in logic and statistics. To have a sense of the foundations of the discipline, majors are required to take two introductory courses in social and cultural traditions and in political economy. Students then elect to specialize in one of two options--Option A or Option B. In either case, twenty-four credits are required to complete the major.
The goals and objectives of majors, then, are constructed against a background of "gateway" courses and two areas of concentration, and are listed as follows:
- "Gateway Courses." Majors are expected to:
- Understand the rigor of conceptual, analytical and statistical inquiry;
- Recognize the significance of traditions in binding generations together;
- Explain the importance of conceptual and empirical connections between politics and economics in structuring the life-histories and life-prospects of peoples of primary African descent.
- Option A: Political Economy. Majors are expected to:
- Analyze the ideas that inform the concept of political economy in the context of the African world;
- Recognize and interpret the political economies of the societies and cultures of the African world;
- Explain the political economy of slavery and its significance for contemporary American society;
- Analyze the politics and economics of race, class and gender in Africa and the Americas;
- Understand the political economy of urban order/disorderand social change.
- Option B: Culture and Society. Majors are expected to:
- Understand the ontology, cosmology and other intellectual constructs that inform the civilizations of the African world;
- Scrutinize systematically the civilizations of the African world;
- Critique the extant historiographies of the African world;
- Understand the use of imagination in the creation of varieties of literary and artistic forms in the cultures of the African world;
- Analyze language, religion, institutions, and transgenerational memory in relation to the societies of the African world.
