Course Description

This course starts with an analysis of African art from the early beginnings to about 500 BC. Here we shall find not only tool making but also painting on rock surfaces and presumably also on the human body. In this period pottery and basketry appeared denoting the beginning of food production, fishing and animal husbandry.  This period will be followed by the inception of metal working technologies between 500 BC to about 1500 AD. In this period, we also have evidence of textile technologies, the trans-Saharan slave trade and the Indian Ocean networks as well as the advent of Islam and Christian religions. The third and last period will deal with modern Africa which was characterized by transatlantic slave trade which ended in the first half of the 19th century replaced by a brief period of colonial rule, paving way for emergence of nation states during the 20th century.

Course Objectives

The course is intended to:

  • 1. Expose students to cultural history of their continent
  • 2. Examine the key features of Africa’s visual culture from the pre-colonial through the colonial to the post-colonial periods
  • 3. Reframe and re-assess recent developments in African art from the African lens.
  • 4. Analyze and interpret the loss and gain in the development of modern African art.
Attachment Name Attachment Type
MAF 7233 Elective – History Of Art DOC PDF PS