Seminar: Race and Colonialism in Southern Africa, 18th-20th Century

This seminar explores colonialism and race in Southern Africa between the 18th and the 20th centuries. It will place a special focus on settler states and their political economies of race, gender, class and ethnicity. The course views both colonialism and race as inherently historical, dynamic and subject to change and, importantly, African contestation and resistance. The seminar considers race and colonialism as political, economic and discursive phenomena with significant social and cultural effects, but likewise attends to their limits, contradictions and failures. We will reflect on how colonial archives engender the ways we understand Southern African history and highlight African intellectual, political and aesthetic contestations of colonial and racial hegemony. Our conversations will be placed against contemporary debates on anti-racism, social justice and reparation.