African Urbanties — A Research Seminar
Fall Semester 2021
Africa is an increasingly urban continent. How is this urbanity being produced? What form is it taking? And how is it being represented? This research seminar will explore the multiple and varied facets of African urbanity today. This course will unpack the range and variety of contemporary African urbanity. In doing so it will engage with both urban form and practices currently emerging, seeking to capture both their local manifestations as well as their regional, and global relevance. We will challenge the various clichéd snapshots of African urbanity, as defined by a lack of infrastructure, a shortage of resources, or the informal slum. Instead, we will seek to produce a more complex portrait of African urbanity today, moving away from the city and its centre as the sole locus of urban activity, to consider the role of extended urbanisation, trans-local networks and the digital arena in shaping new urbanities.
We will welcome a series of scholars and practitioners who are currently redefining what we understand by African urbanity. For example, we will speak with architects, anthropologists, geographers, theorists, economists, historians and curators. What are they observing on the field? And how does this challenge current understandings of urban Africa?
Each session will be structured around a main reading and a presentation and discussion with our guest expert. In addition to this, students will be expected to present current representations of the topic under debate, for example from film, art or fiction. Alongside these conversations, we will read our way through a rich syllabus of both scientific articles, book chapters, and reviews. This will be complemented with an exploration of how art, film and fiction has shaped, and continues to shape current representations of urban Africa.
Teaching: Alice Hertzog