Professor J. Collins
Using a variety of paradigms, this course explores a broad range of popular musical forms in sub-Saharan Africa as stylistic areas. Southern, Central, East and West Africa (Francophone and Anglophone) musical styles are considered. The historical scope of the inquiry extends from 19th century to the present. The investigation seeks to highlight the relationships among popular music, traditional performance, and the social and cultural forces of modernization.

Sample Syllabus

Professor M. Williams
This course will explore the background for one of the most phenomenal world movements with its origin in the African exile condition of the new world and Europe. What DuBois dubbed the “triangle of suffering” spawned the liberation ideology of Pan-Africanism inaugurated by a small blackelite in the USA and the West Indies, with inputs by the tiny African group of intellectuals who were marooned in Europe after the Second World War.
The course will concentrate on the lives and intellectual outputs of W.E.B. DuBois, George Padmore, and Kwame Nkrumah. In Nkrumah’s case, his practical engagement as the leader of Ghana and the major force in the African liberation movement will also be explored.
The course looks beyond this triumvirate in the rise of global black intellectual consciousness and its tussle with international communism and the western imperial systems. The course considers these three leaders’ impact on current African political discourse within the expanding interests of the Pan-African ideology which continues to influence Africa and the black world’s legitimate place in the global system.

Sample Syllabus

Professor G.K. Nukunya
Cross-listed with V14.9101 (Anthropology)

The course introduces students to aspects of Ghanaian society and culture. It considers both traditional aspects of life and how people live their lives in this first decade of the new millennium. How Ghanaians perceive and conceive themselves and their society; how others view the society and life of Ghanaians also receive critical attention. The course emphasizes that Ghanaians are not an undifferentiated lot and that what the different people say their behavior should be differs from what their actual behavior is. Students will get to examine these varied perceptions and perspectives as well as construct their own representations of the society. The course will also attempt to answer questions about Ghana and Ghanaians that are of interest to the non-Ghanaian getting acquainted with the country. The course combines talks, readings, discussions, visits, and students' presentations in class. There will be a written examination at the end of the semester and a dissertation on an aspect of Ghanaian society and culture that students might choose to explore.

Professor K. Anyidoho
Cross-listed with V29.9128 (Comparative Literature)
Note: this course is open to all students for elective credit. Comparative literature majors in track II (literary and cultural studies) may count this course toward one of their non-core major requirements.

The course examines certain recurring themes and critical issues in post-colonial narratives in Africa. It begins with a look at the debate and polemics around post-colonialism as a critical and theoretical concept. It then dwells on specific narratives, mainly novels by African writers, works located in the period following classical colonialism. The reading of these narratives is informed by such critical issues as the crisis of cultures in contact; personal, class, ethnic and national identities; the politics of gender; debates over language; the aesthetics and politics of art; strategic transformations in narrative form, etc.

Professor P. Jaddo
This course is also listed under Metropolitan Studies. Students in the Art History Dept: This course counts for Urban Design credit.

This interdisciplinary course combines ethnographic readings, representations, and interpretations of city and urban cultures with a video production component in which students create short documentaries on the city of Accra. The interpretative classes will run concurrently with production management, sights and sound, and post-production workshops. The course will have three objectives: (1) teach students the documentary tradition from Flaherty to Rouch; (2) use critical Cinema theory to define a document with a camera; and (3) create a short documentary film.

Sample Syllabus

Professor K. Saah
The course is designed to provide basic communicative competence in oral and written Twi for beginners. It focuses on the structure of the language as well as the culture of the people. The areas covered include i) oral drills; ii) orthography; iii) written exercises; iv) translation (from English to Twi and from Twi to English); v) reading and comprehension; vii) conversation and narration (dialogues, greetings, description of day-to-day activities, bargaining, giving directions); viii) Grammar (parts of speech, nouns, e.g., verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, particles, determiners; tense, aspect, negation, and questions; and ix) and the culture.

Professor A. Anyidoho
Course description to come.

Professor J. Baffour
This course is also listed under Metropolitan Studies, and is cross-listed with K50.9701 (Gallatin).

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Contact betts.brown@nyu.edu for application information. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite.

Professor G.K. Nukunya
Cross-listed with V18.9776 (Africana Studies)

The course introduces students to aspects of Ghanaian society and culture. It considers both traditional aspects of life and how people live their lives in this first decade of the new millennium. How Ghanaians perceive and conceive themselves and their society; how others view the society and life of Ghanaians also receive critical attention. The course emphasizes that Ghanaians are not an undifferentiated lot and that what the different people say their behavior should be differs from what their actual behavior is. Students will get to examine these varied perceptions and perspectives as well as construct their own representations of the society. The course will also attempt to answer questions about Ghana and Ghanaians that are of interest to the non-Ghanaian getting acquainted with the country. The course combines talks, readings, discussions, visits, and students' presentations in class. There will be a written examination at the end of the semester and a dissertation on an aspect of Ghanaian society and culture that students might choose to explore.

Professor J. Anquandah
Art History students: This course counts for Non-Western credit.

This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore Ghanaian art and art history in their historical, anthropological and archaeological contexts. The course serves both as a survey and critique of the literature on West African art, and as an exploration of method and theory in sub-Saharan art historical research. Students explore major works from key periods of Ghanaian artistic and cultural production and are involved in practical work in laboratories and museums dealing with art specimens from local archaeological sites and ethnographic contexts.

Sample Syllabus

Professor E. Sutherland

This course shall focus on the place of women in the literary tradition, an issue that is very current in the discourse on the literature of Africa and its Diaspora. Women writers have emerged at the forefront of the movement to restore African women to their proper place in the study of African history, society and culture. In this process, the need to recognize the women as literary artists in the oral mode has also been highlighted. Furthermore, the work of women writers is gaining increasing significance and deserves to be examined within the context of canon formation. Authors and texts will be examined, focusing on such topics as the heritage of women's literature, images of women in the works of male writers; women in traditional and contemporary society; women and the African family in the literary tradition; literature as a tool for self-definition and self-liberation; African women writers; female expressions of cultural nationalism in the Caribbean; female novelists of the African continent; Black women dramatists; the poetry of African women.

Sample Syllabus

Professor K. Anyidoho
Cross-listed with V18.9779 (Africana Studies)
Note: this course is open to all students for elective credit. Comparative literature majors in track II (literary and cultural studies) may count this course toward one of their non-core major requirements.

The course examines certain recurring themes and critical issues in post-colonial narratives in Africa. It begins with a look at the debate and polemics around post-colonialism as a critical and theoretical concept. It then dwells on specific narratives, mainly novels by African writers, works located in the period following classical colonialism. The reading of these narratives is informed by such critical issues as the crisis of cultures in contact; personal, class, ethnic and national identities; the politics of gender; debates over language; the aesthetics and politics of art; strategic transformations in narrative form, etc.

Professor J. Baffour
Cross-listed with V18.9042 (Social and Cultural Analysis).

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Contact betts.brown@nyu.edu for application information. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite.

Professor K. Baku
This course is under development. Course description coming soon.

Professor A. Gadzekpo
The aim of the course is to have NYU journalism students team up with students of University of Ghana to report on Ghana. Reporting teams will be constituted and reviewed throughout the semester, depending on the number and experience of students who sign up for the Course. Three thematic areas – Politics, Health/Environment and Social Issues – will form the focus of coverage.
Reporting Assignments by student teams constitute the essence of the course. Ideally, stories should reflect perspectives from both genders, as well as the socio-economic context of Ghana. Experts will be invited to give background lectures on the three thematic areas. The course will also involve class discussions and critiques on how to cover the selected areas of reportage.

Sample Syllabus

Professor N. Amarteifio
Counter to the prevailing view of a rural African living in traditional communities, the majority of Africans are rapidly becoming urban dwellers. African cities are fast joining the ranks of mega-cities, global market hubs and centers for political and cultural exchange. This phenomenon raises important questions that form the basis for this course. Are these cities merely the products of globalization, or do their roots lie in pre-colonial tradition? Are global cities a new phenomenon in Africa, or can we find traces of earlier international links? What factors define the spatial geography and political economy of urban Africa? What challenges do African governments face in managing the city? How has the architecture and the arts of the African city been influenced by external connections?
This course examines those factors that have shaped Accra throughout history. While the emphasis of the course is on Accra, the course also introduces the main theoretical debates across disciplinary fields in the comparative study of the city. Students will be challenged to utilize primary resources such as national archives and special collection libraries, maps, and various cultural resources to address some of the questions being posed.

Sample Syllabus

Professor P. Jaddo
This course is also listed under Africana Studies.

This interdisciplinary course combines ethnographic readings, representations, and interpretations of city and urban cultures with a video production component in which students create short documentaries on the city of Accra. The interpretative classes will run concurrently with production management, sights and sound, and post-production workshops. The course will have three objectives: (1) teach students the documentary tradition from Flaherty to Rouch; (2) use critical Cinema theory to define a document with a camera; and (3) create a short documentary film.

Sample Syllabus

Professor J. Baffour
This course is also listed under Africana Studies, and cross-listed with K50.9701 (Gallatin)

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Contact betts.brown@nyu.edu for application information. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite.

Professor K.A. Senah
This course will examine the various dimensions of the field of public health and how the public’s health is protected. Students explore the ways social, economic, and political forces influence the health of populations. Additionally, this course will focus upon some of the current ethical public health dilemmas where the rights of the individual versus the rights of society come into conflict. The course makes use of diverse methods of instruction, including, but not limited to, small group discussion, group exercises, mini-lectures, student debates, field-based group projects and student presentations. Students may be involved in gathering information and observations from projects outside of the classroom at government, NGO and health care institutions.

Professor A. Busia
“Globalization” in its many aspects and formulations has become in the last decades a given factor of contemporary life. This course aims to critique this concept not as a fact of modern society, but in its deployment as a term of late capitalism. Believing that invisible histories can be traced through the lives of women, we will look at the long history of the making of the modern world primarily through the movements of women, frequently through their own words. Our illustrations will focus on, but not be confined to African women. We trace how from the trajectories of the forced migrations represented by the transatlantic slave trade to the demands of indentured servitude through to the traffic in women in the latter part of the twentieth century the bodies of black women reflect the circuits of trade through which the concept of globalization can be mapped.

Sample Syllabus

• Contemporary African Dance and Movement Techniques
• Traditional Design and Architecture in Africa
• Traditional Music

• Africa in the International Setting
• The History of African Chieftaincy

• Conflict in African States
• Traditional Medicine

Courses offered through the English and modern languages departments and the School of Performing Arts

Courses offered through the history department

Courses offered through the linguistics department.

Courses offered through the departments of archaeology, economics, geography and resource development, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, social work, and statistics