Description: This lecture emphasizes histories of pandemics in African contexts, urging students to think beyond the more normative ideas about pandemics: as either natural forces occurring beyond human control or, the result of human encroachments into the environment. The course aims to generate fresh perspectives useful to re/framing the important questions for history theory and, in tandem, will ground a newer arena for the emerging Africanist scholarship.
Description: This lecture leverages the works of Ella Shohat and Robert Stam on multiculturalism in film to explore constructs of gender in Nigerian cinema and correlations between 'dis/ability', notions of poverty, education and self-expression in Nigerian short subject genre for television. Constructs of gender can be seen as having several intersects: power, dis/empowerment, expressions of sexualities. These intersects also include tropes. For the purpose of the lecture and screenings, dis/ability is defined as 'different abilities' and emotional and physical acuities and correlations between education, poverty and self-representation are examined.
Description: This lecture explores the following questions concerning today's Nigerian media and culture industry: how is Nollywood mediating global culture(s)? and: in what ways is contemporary Nollywood cinema a fora for transnational publics and identities? The lecture also includes an introduction to emerging Nigerian cinematic genres, codes and conventions involving Nollywood-Bollywood co-productions.