2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

FYSM 100 First-Year Seminar
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a "community of inquiry" by developing habits of mind essential to liberal learning. Through the study of a compelling issue or broad topic chosen by their faculty member, students will: - Critically analyze information and ideas - Examine issues from multiple perspectives - Discuss, debate and defend ideas, including one's own views, with clarity and reason - Develop discernment, facility and ethical responsibility in using information, and - Create clear academic writing The small group seminar format of this course promotes discussion and interaction among students and their professor. In addition, the professor serves as students' initial academic advisor. This course does not duplicate in content any other course in the curriculum and may not be used to fulfill any other graduation requirement.

AFST 170 African Civilizations to 1850
Cross-listed with HIST 170-01.

HIST 170 African Civilizations to 1850
Cross-listed with AFST 170-01.

AFST 220 Atlantic Slave Trade 1450-1850
Cross-listed with HIST 272-01 and LALC 272-01. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority. During several centuries of European colonization in the New World, a thriving slave trade forced the emigration of millions of Africans across the Atlantic-an immigration far larger than the simultaneous immigration of Europeans to the same regions. We will address not only the workings of the slave trade on both sides (and in the middle) of the Atlantic, but also the cultural communities of West and West-Central Africa and encounters and exchanges in the new slave societies of North and South America. Through examination of work processes, social orders, cultural strategies and influences, and ideas about race and geography, across time and in several regions, we will explore the crucial roles of Africans in the making of the Atlantic world

HIST 272 Atlantic Slave Trade 1450-1850
Cross-listed with AFST 220-02 and LALC 272-01. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority.

LALC 272 Atlantic Slave Trade 1450-1850
Cross-listed with HIST 272-01 and AFST 220-02. Part of the Atlantic Slave Trade Ghana Mosaic. While the class is open to all students, students in the Mosaic will be given priority.

HIST 500 Independent Study

Spring 2025

AFST 220 Ecological History of Africa
Cross-listed with HIST 284-01. This course provides an introduction to the ecological history of Africa. We will focus in some detail on demography, the domestication of crops and animals, climate, the spread of New World crops (maize, cassava, cocoa), and disease environments from the earliest times to the present. Central to our study will be the idea that Africa's landscapes are the product of human action. Therefore, we will examine case studies of how people have interacted with their environments. African ecology has long been affected indirectly by decisions made at a global scale. Thus we will explore Africa's engagement with imperialism and colonization and the global economy in the twentieth century. The course ends with an examination of contemporary tensions between conservation and economic development.

HIST 284 Ecological History of Africa
Cross-listed with AFST 220-03.

HIST 404 Nationalism
What is nationalism? Is there something innate about the nation, or is it an idea constructed by politicians? What is the role of culture? And what about the rise of the subnational-the claims of local, regional, and ethnic minorities? This seminar will examine theory and case studies, including the Palestinian, U.S., African, and Afrikaner examples, to reach a conclusion.