Study Abroad in Ghana
Curriculum
MPAGE students are all enrolled in a section of the core course, “Pan-Africanism as Cross-Cultural Dialogue,” and also in one elective course of their choice. Courses provide (4) hours of Morehouse College credit. There are research, directed studies and service learning opportunities available during the Extended Stay period of one month after the end of classes (see at the end of the course listing below). Any student in good standing at a college or university can apply to attend MPAGE.
The African Renaissance Studies courses are six weeks long and organized in modules. The first and last modules are on-line: before departure and after return the class work is conducted virtually so that you can participate from wherever you are. We depart together and spend 4 weeks in Africa. Courses are composed of 8 – 12 students, including Ghanaian students.
| Ghana | Dates: Tuesday, May 21 to Monday, June 17 |
CORE COURSE
SOCIOLOGY
Pan-Africanism
as Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Team Taught
All Sessions
This course promotes an understanding of the challenges of cross-cultural dialogue when conceiving solutions for social problems, carrying out research, and engaging in collaborative efforts. It provides training in African Humanities – the knowledge of ethics, the physical world, and social structures based in African world views. The struggle for balance in gender relations, with their triple heritage of Traditional, Islamic and Christian ethical systems, is also explored. Course work includes lectures by eminent scholars at Ghana’s universities; working with journalists and researchers in the field interviewing to gain firsthand understanding of how these world views are reflected in people’s thinking; personal experience in rural settings of relationships with nature and each other of African traditional societies; and writing and editing video presentations of this material. Topics will include an introduction to local languages, ethical systems, history, economic sustainability, culture and etiquette, foods, music, art and dance.
ELECTIVE COURSES
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Global African Identity and Ethics: The Nile Valley and Beyond
Dr. Samuel Livingston and Faculty
Egypt/Sudan
(Not available Summer 2013)
This course provides an interdisciplinary examination of the development of African or black identities in a global context through an examination of cultural, historical, literary and sociological texts that speak to ethics. The African historical and cultural experience is the heuristic center of the course. Specifically, the course addresses the emergence of African Diasporic identities through interactions with diverse environs and non-African cultures from the Proto/Prehistoric and Nile Valley period to the Post-colonial present. The primary method of study will consist of a close reading and analysis of primary sources – literary, artistic, inscribed and other diverse texts.
BIOLOGY
African Ethnobotany
Dr. Keith Howard
(Not Available Summer 2013)
This course involves students in ethnobotany fieldwork with the North Scale Institute at its Global Model Forest site in Elmina, and the Taimako family of traditional healers in Tamale hosted by the Sankore Foundation. The Global Model Forest is a 25-acre site that is being planted with many of the most important plant species from Ghana, Africa, and the world so that students can:
- become adept at plant identification and learn from propagating, processing and using some of them. Students will participate in meal preparation and develop a set of important plant recipes
- learn plant taxonomy and prepare specimens on the site and in the neighboring environs for inclusion in the herbariums
- study the folklore of plant use, including its spiritual context and agricultural taboos
- develop an understanding of the scientific issues around species identification, propagation and breeding, testing for efficacy, and quality maintenance
- observe the use of plants in healing practices traditionally and in health clinics (in Tamale)
- become aware of the value of plants used for fiber and plants used for developing structures and energy
Through the Prism of Malaria: Cell Biology and Ethnobotany Approaches
Dr. Gordon Awandare, University of Ghana
Ghana/Burkina Faso
(Not Available Summer 2013)
This course will take one important chronic and pervasive global health issue of the Southern Hemisphere, malaria, as its focus and present the multi-faceted array of efforts to prevent, contain and treat this disease. In particular, you will learn about traditional plant medicine approaches studied through ethnobotany, the new approaches to vaccination and the morphology of the disease from a cell biology perspective. We will also explore the public health and treatment issues such as its impact on different age groups and in different locals, and environmental issues of water and sanitation management to prevent infestation. Through the prism of malaria, you will see biology, botany, and the related sciences and social sciences in action.
KINESIOLOGY
CULTURAL KINESIOLOGY: THE ART OF MOVEMENT
Dr. Tarin Hampton
Ghana
ENGLISH
West African Literature and Urban Film
TBA
(Not Available Summer 2013)
Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka describes “one of the social functions of literature: the visionary reconstruction of the past for the purpose of social direction.” The African novel since the 1950s has, for the most part, followed this description, or prescription, for a politically and socially engaged literature. The objective of this course is to undertake the literary analysis of a diverse selection of acclaimed West African novels of the late 20th century and to gain an appreciation of their specific contexts—through perspectives in Africana literary criticism and philosophy, history, feminism, and postcolonial theory. Students become familiar with Ghanaian, West African and African societies through reading novels and essays, viewing and analyzing African films, and engaging in creative writing. Students will work on a special edition of the journal, Nkrumaist Review, published by the Africana Studies Institute of African University College of Communications (AUCC).
PSYCHOLOGY
Black Boys, Black Men, Identity and Popular Culture Across the Diaspora
Dr. David Wall Rice
Ghana/Burkina Faso
(Not Available Summer 2013)
This personality psychology-rooted course will look at the varied positioning of Black boys and men within media spaces, and will explore how these definitions inform identity assumption across cultures. This exploration will be done by deconstructing contexts and human behavior paradigms relative to social norms and stereotype. Emphasis will be placed on fundamentals of human behavior, media history, pop culture critique and content analysis. While cinema, television, recorded music and periodicals frame much of the course, new media streams will also be examined for behavioral and social influence on Black Male identification.
African Centered Psychology II
Dr. David Wall Rice
Ghana/Burkina Faso
This course utilizes the research and theoretical literature in psychology and other sciences in explaining pre-colonial African thought as it applies to human psychological functioning. Applications to contemporary African American lifestyles are discussed, as is the role of mainstream cultures and technology.
SOCIOLOGY
African and African
Diaspora Families
Dr. Bilal Mansa King
Ghana/Burkina Faso
This course will help students understand how family life and behavior can vary with economic, political and cultural contexts in Africa and the African Diaspora. This course examines similarities and differences between families of the African Diaspora and on the continent (historical and contemporary). Primary activities of the class include culling sociological ideas from texts and other media. Data and logic will then be used to refine and evaluate those ideas. In the process, students will learn how to think more sociologically and how to use sociological research methods. Issues covered can include, but are not limited to, single parents; paternal involvement; male identity formation as sons, brothers, uncles, fathers, and seniors; female identity formation as girls, daughters, sisters, mothers, and seniors; collective solutions to parenting and child socialization; the roles of naming ceremonies and rites of passage; migration, immigration, and transnational family life; the interplay between economic, religious, political, and family behavior; families in war and genocide; HIV/AIDS; and popular media and families.
SOCIOLOGY
Sustainable and Development
Dr. Cynthia Lucas Hewitt
Ghana/Burkina Faso
(Not Available Summer 2013)
Our students will study the world-system and political economy, and the applicability of new eco-economy paradigms of sustainability as models of development. Class work will include hands-on assessment of the local and international ecological situation; and analysis of socio-economic inequality and the well-being of various ethnic and class strata in Ghana and African societies comparatively. Both issues of self-sufficiency and domestic production, and global markets and industries, such as the nutraceutical industry for organic and herbal products, will be explored. Issues of conservation, of forest biodiversity and local food culture, are addressed. We consider the social and philosophical heritage that supports sustainable practices. Students are involved in new alternative energy and social business initiatives.
