Part 1 of this new online course introduces you to the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, the Pan-African Congress, Leopold Senghor’s notion of “˜negritude’, and much more.

W.E.B. Du Bois was a leading pan-Africanist activist and author.

Over the next 10 weeks, African Arguments is delighted to be bringing you a short online course in African Political Thought. The course will be hosted by Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), and will consist of a series of 10-minute video lectures. These lectures will cover aspects of African political thought from the period preceding decolonisation, to the years of independence, and up to the present day.

Each week, a short reading list will be published alongside the lecture. Viewers are also encouraged to pose questions they have for Chan in the comments section below.

If you’d like to get an update when new episodes go up, please send an email with subject line “APT” to [email protected] and you’ll be notified when new lectures are posted.

The focus of Part 1 is:

Antecedents: race and romanticism in Africa – from WEB du Bois to the Manchester Conference to Senghor’s “˜negritude’.

For an audio-only version:

Reading list for Part 1

Guy Martin, African Political Thought, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Edmond Wilmot Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, Baltimore: Black Classic, 1994.

WEB du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks, New York: Penguin, 1996.

CLR James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, New York: Random House, 1963.

John Henrik Clarke with Amy Jacques Garvey (ed.), Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa, New York: Random House, 1974.

Coming next…

• Part 2: The thought of liberation: Cabral and the Lusophonic thinkers; the “˜pacific’ counterpoint of Kaunda.
• Part 3: The New African Man: the political thought of transformation – Kaunda, Nyerere, Obote, Nkrumah.
• Part 4: The degeneration into “˜Big Men’: case studies of Mobutu and Banda; the critique of Mbembe.
• Part 5: The coup “˜artists’ and the new nationalisms-on-command: from Gowon to Rawlings; the contrasts between Sankara and Amin; the contrasts and similarities between Obasanjo and Abacha.
• Part 6: The old liberationists and their reassertion in new nationalisms: Mugabe’s political thought.
• Part 7: Africa in the world: Mbeki’s African Renaissance – nostalgia and the toleration of the carnivalesque; Ngugi’s linguistic chauvinism; Mandaza’s neo-Marxist retrospection.
• Part 8: The call for democracy: the critique of Soyinka; new constitutionalisms and the looking eastwards to China, Singapore and Malaysia; the model of Russian democracy.
• Part 9: On Yvonne Vera’s novel of trauma after liberation, gender equality and other equalities in constitution-building for nation-building.
• Part 10: African intellectual currents and philosophy today: going it alone vs integration with a hegemonic world; Africa and the ICC, Africa and electronic globalisation; the thought of the outlawed commons.