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Seminars Aim to Redefine Curriculum
With a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, LAS's Center for African Studies is organizing a series of seminars intended to redefine African studies at the University of Illinois.
The six seminars — three in the summer and three in the fall of 2002 — will assemble Africanist scholars from around the world to analyze traditional ways of teaching about Africa and then propose more effective ways of reaching today's students. Among the objectives are to revise the undergraduate curricula and devise new curricula for team-taught interdisciplinary courses. They will also develop models for web-based curricula as well as for collaborative courses taught by faculty at UI and at institutions in Africa. The latter may involve study abroad.
Although the emphasis of the seminars will be on enhancing the program at U of I, the recommendations may serve as a model for African studies nationwide. One worry among academics is that African studies suffers from chronic marginalization. They contend that all of the so-called "area studies" fields are in danger of losing their relevancy — and funding — because of the current emphasis on globalization. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, director of African studies in LAS, disagrees with this pessimistic outlook and proposed these seminars to refocus attention toward what the field has to offer.
The language and area studies centers are among the most robust interdisciplinary programs in the college, according to Charles Stewart, an executive associate dean in LAS. "Today they are literally charting the terms of United States' engagement with our global future." The program in African Studies at Illinois was founded in the late 1960s.
Fall 2001