Health, Healing, and the Body in African History

This course examines histories of healing and harming in Africa through the lens of the individual body and the body politic. The course begins with core concepts in the history of the body and African health histories. We then explore entanglements of health, politics, and the body in precolonial Africa. Historical case studies ask how colonialism reshaped ecological health, social and biological reproduction, therapeutics, the laboring body. Contemporary case studies examine the legacies of this history, focusing on queer bodies and HIV, toxicity and pollution, and decolonizing global health. Theoretical anchors include Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, Michel Foucault, Saidiya Hartman. Readings will draw from foundational scholarship on health and healing in Africa, recent pathbreaking work by African scholars, and fiction by Jennifer Makumbi, Octavia Butler, Chinua Achebe, and Ayobami Adebayo. No prior knowledge of African history is expected.