Study Abroad in Ghana - May 2009
Curriculum
The African Renaissance Studies courses are six weeks long and organized in modules. The first and last modules, before departure and after return, are conducted virtually on-line so that students can participate from wherever they are located. We then depart together and spend four weeks in Ghana. In Ghana, there are four (4) modules, each of which is set in a particular geographical location and offers a specialized experience unique to its environment.
Two courses are based in each city (Accra, Kumasi, and Elmina), however, during the program we visit the other cities, so that all students have some experience of what students in the other courses are learning. Courses are composed of 10 to 12 U.S. students, up to 4 Ghanaian students, the Morehouse faculty and one or more Ghanaian co-instructors.
CORE COURSESociology
Pan-Africanism as Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Dr. Cynthia M. Hewitt and Dr. Anne Borden
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. 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, family relations, foods, music, art and dance. The course is on-site in Ghana for four weeks, and during the first and last week there will be internet-based virtual classes.
ELECTIVE COURSES IN ELMINA AREA
Biology
African Ethnobotany
Dr. Keith Howard
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. 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
Sociology
Sustainability
and Development
Dr. Cynthia M. Hewitt
Students will study the world system and political economy, and the applicability of new eco-economy paradigms of sustainability as a criterion for development. 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. When visiting Tamale, students will interact with University for Development Studies (UDS) multidisciplinary student teams who live in the villages, do assessments, and attempt to enact their proposed social changes. Course work includes: local cultural lore about plants for nutrition, dietary social practices, medicinal uses, sustainable building construction, solar energy, and drip irrigation. The struggle for balanced gender relations with the triple heritage of Traditional, Islamic and Christian ethical systems is also explored.
COURSES IN ACCRA
English
West African Literature and Urban Film
Dr. Michael Janis
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).
Sociology
African and African
Diaspora Families
Dr. Bilal Mansa King
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.
COURSES IN KUMASI
African American Studies
Global African Identity:
An Exploration of Ethical Texts Across the Diaspora
Dr. Samuel Livingston and Dr. Leah Creque
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.
Art
Painting/Sculpture Studio
Dr. Richmond Ackam and Louis Delsarte
This course involves practical production of art works in drawing and painting through experimentation with local Ghanaian art techniques, materials, tools, motifs and subjects in hands-on studio art workshops. The development of drawing and painting by Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora is examined, and experiential field study includes visits to museums and art centers. Projects culminate in exhibitions in Ghana and the USA, and a special journal edition publication.
