INSTRUCTOR
In addition to instructing courses, I have supervised several undergraduate theses at McGill University (Afri 480 and Afri 481), I have guest lectured on courses in McGill's Politics and History Departments, and I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant in 2014-15 at SOAS for a course entitled Introduction to the History of Africa (Hist 110).
Summer 2021, McGill University
THEMES IN WORLD HISTORY (HIST 315)
This course seeks to explore a historical perspective on the greatest challenge currently facing humankind, which is (notwithstanding the current pandemic) global climate change. It being the case that the future of humanity will be indelibly shaped by how societies face up to the challenge of global warming, this course examines how climate changes have also affected past human societies. It focuses on the period c.1500-1900, thus mirroring the growth of Capitalist expansion from the ‘Age of Exploration’ to the ‘Scramble for Africa.’ This periodization will enable students to think about the answers to several questions: How has Capitalist expansion since c.1900 contributed to global climatic changes? How have societies in this context exacerbated or attempted to mitigate against the effects of a changing climate? How can historians methodologically insert climatic factors into world history? And how might historians be able to contribute to knowledge that could help mitigate the effects of global warming in the present and future?
Winter 2020, McGill University
WORLD HISTORY, 600-2000 (HIST 213)
This course introduces students to the major themes of world history from the emergence of Islam to present-day globalisation. Students will engage with many of the key themes of this longue durée history, including trade, technology, disease, imperialism, and human-environment interaction. While well-known events, such as the spread of bubonic plague in the 14th century, the Scramble for Africa, and the two World Wars, will be addressed appropriately, students will be encouraged to place them in their broader contexts. Thus, students will be asked to think about broad patterns over long periods, instead of confining themselves to histories of ‘big men’ and events. They will do so by analysing a mixture of ‘big ideas,’ such as the longue durée, world systems, and the ‘Capitalocene,’ and smaller case studies that are indicative of wider trends, such as the global history of maize, the exchange of ‘elephant cultures’ in Eurasia, and the history of a French colonial infantry unit during World War II and its aftermath. This course, therefore, takes a multitude of approaches that collectively reflect the diversity of world histories over time and space.
Winter 2020, McGill University
HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA (HIST 382)
This course examines the history of South Africa from early times to the present, beginning with the encounter between hunter gatherers and sedentary farmers, and ending with the post-Apartheid era. It gives particular attention to the roles of race, class, gender, and generation in South African history, taking into account the role of indigenous populations and European settlers. Thus, while important figures such as Shaka, Cecil Rhodes, and Nelson Mandela – who at different times have dominated visions of South Africa – are given consideration, the contexts within which they operated are given deeper analysis. African-European encounters on the frontiers of settler expansion in the nineteenth century, the emergence of twentieth-century urban cultures, and broader connections between South Africa and the wider African continent and elsewhere are all important features of the course. The result for students will be an understanding of South Africa’s history within its broader historical, conceptual, and regional contexts.
Fall 2019 and Fall 2017, McGill University
INTRO TO AFRICAN HISTORY (HIST 200)
This course introduces students to the key themes, methods, and concepts in Africa’s pre-colonial history. It covers the period from the iron age to European Conquest in c.1880, and it examines the whole continent from the Cape to the Nile Delta, and from the Senegal River to the Red Sea. It draws on analyses from the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds to place Africa in a global context, and it places Africa’s pre-colonial history in the context of its more recent past. In so doing, it examines Africa in contexts in which it is often neglected. With a few recent exceptions, Africa rarely features beyond the periphery of studies of European Imperialism, and current Africanist research tends to neglect the pre-colonial era in favour periods since c.1880. This course, then, offers students the opportunity to engage with new and cutting-edge research that reconsiders Africa’s pre-colonial past in the longue durée of African and global history.
Winter 2018, McGill University
RESEARCH SEMINAR IN AFRICAN STUDIES (AFRI 598)
This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to address themes that link Africa’s ‘past’ trajectories with its ‘present’ and ‘future’ political, social, and environmental realities. Specifically, it links the legacies of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and the period of African independence to issues and challenges that are prominent in contemporary Africa. Important themes include Africa’s relationships with the wider world, long-term competitions for land and resources, urbanisation and the emergence of distinct urban identities, the dynamics of cross-border networks, competing conceptions of gender and sexuality, and issues of governance in the African context. As a research seminar, this course is driven by student participation. Students are required to complete the readings before seminar sessions and to use them to inform a discussion about the prescribed topic. The role of the instructor is to facilitate and direct the discussion when necessary (it is not to lecture). Each seminar session will be designed so that its theme is analysed from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, development studies, economics, environmental studies, history, political science, and others. Students will then use the interdisciplinary techniques used in seminar sessions to design, present, and conduct their own research project. The course is split into three sections. The first section (covering the first eight weeks) tackles pre-determined topics that are prominent in Africa’s current affairs and its academic discourses. In the second section (covering weeks 9-13), students present their own research projects. Finally, the final week of the semester is reserved for an interdisciplinary analysis of an as-yet-determined event that is prominent in the news.