Course Description

Freedom, citizenship and social justice in Africa will be the primary focus of this course as we explore activism and artivism through music, hip-hop, verbal and visual performance, slam poetry, street art, urban culture, and the media. We will build social and political portraits of activists and artivists, using digital tools of collaborative annotation and authoring/publishing multimedia-rich content that explore expressions of community engagement, student protest, counter-discourse, counterculture, political dissent, civil disobedience and political solidarity in Africa. We will look at contemporary activists such as Stella Nyanzi, Octopizzo, Dj Awadi, Sona Jabartheh, Keyti, Sister Fa, Colonel Karbone 14, Balai Citoyen, Bobi Wine, Docta, Elom 20ce, Xuman, and many others to understand some of the concerns faced by the youth and citizens in contemporary Africa.

                                            Course Objectives

1. The students will learn about the political, social, economic and cultural challenges faced by Sub-Saharan African people today in Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Comoros, the DRC, Gabon, Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, etc.

2. We will examine the various strategies used by the African youth, broadly defined, to build a modern and inclusive Pan-African society through various forms of political and artistic expression including music, hip-hop, slam poetry, visual performance, street art, the media, protest and civil disobedience.

3. The students will analyze three areas of study: Arts and Politics (AP); Protest and Civil Disobedience (PCD); Media and Cyber Activism (MCA)

4. We will be able to connect specific forms of expression to one or numerous characteristics of the struggle for freedom, citizenship and social justice.

5. The students will collaborate throughout the semester using a number of digital tools such as Perusall, Panopto, Scalar and Timelines.js that will allow them to examine and record all forms of multimedia-rich content including blogs, videos, podcasts, but also critical and theoretical textual content including books, book chapters and articles.

6. We will collaboratively build a multi-media rich platform using Scalar in order to author and publish our findings that will allow us to provide the global community with a comprehensive, interactive analysis and presentation of the various social and political activists, and artivists.