Africa and Globalization
Minor
About this program
The Minor in Africa and Globalization is a multidisciplinary program in African history, politics, economics, and cultures, designed to provide students with a broad understanding of the issues facing African communities, societies, and nation-states in the past as well as the present.
Program Curriculum and Requirements
Program Scope
The African Studies Minor is a multidisciplinary program in African history, politics, economics, and cultures, designed to provide students with a broad understanding of the issues facing African communities, societies, and nation-states in the past as well as the present. Courses from multiple departments and programs are incorporated into the African Studies Minor, offering different disciplinary bases for the examination and analysis of African contributions to world civilizations. It enables students to integrate and apply knowledge in the evolution of African societies from being the cradle of humanity to providing labor for the use of other civilizations and through colonial and post-colonial linkages, technological expansion, and economic liberalization. Students will examine African accomplishments, mores, traditions, cultures, and civilizations to finish the minor with a greater degree of understanding of, and tolerance for, cultural differences and ethnic pluralism as well as the problems inherent in the process of social change in Africa and the African Diaspora.
Students who select this minor are presented with different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Common to all these perspectives is the critical examination of social change, modernization, development, and globalization. It is hoped that students will be provided the tools to enable them to build their own frames of reference, syntheses of concepts, data, and theories, to enrich their social attitudes and cultural values concerning Africa, and to appreciate its richness and its unity in diversity.
Program Learning Outcomes
- Examine the history, politics, culture, literature, and art of the countries to illuminate the interplay between development, politics, societal change, and Africa’s role in international relations.
- Explore dynamics that affect the totality of the African continent as well as geographical/regional differences from an interdisciplinary perspective.
- Develop familiarity with issues such as environmental sustainability, social justice, resource management, artistic creativity, social change, immigration, governance, health and politics in the African continent.