African Life Stories

This course uses the stories of people's lives - memoirs, biographies, and oral histories - to study the history of the African continent. Some historians assume that the only "legitimate' sources for historical knowledge are archival documents. In contrast, this course insists that history is fundamentally a craft of story tellers. Through this lens, we will study the craft of writing a life story in the African context. What's in a life? What does it mean to record and narrate the story of someone else's life? What about your own?  Fulfills HU distribution (2013 curriculum)  300 level course. No first years.