Great ideas for teaching about Africa

the long version

Some of the best college and university teachers in the field describe projects and assignments that have worked effectively for them in teaching African studies in a variety of disciplines. The authors present a wide range of approaches: from preparing African cuisines as a way to understand people-environment relations to using the Internet to develop a virtual art history exhibit; from viewing an African film or assigning a novel to broaden students' grasp of social context to challenging students to draft their own development projects in order to better appreciate village-level society and economy. Six chapters are devoted to ways of handling such particularly sensitive subjects as ethnicity in Africa, the slave trade, AIDS, and female genital mutilation.