The Spring 2013 edition of  History 134a | African Societies and Cultures is gearing up. Our first class meeting will be on Tuesday, 2 April in HH 143.

We have a full agenda for the first meeting:

• course logistics and requirements
• the first lecture: Situating “Africa” in Time, Space, and Western Imaginations

This class will be interactive, so come prepared to ask questions, write short responses, and look up information. If you have a wi-fi enabled device (laptop, tablet, phone) you are welcome to bring it to class *to use for in-class assignments.*

We will use Colin McEvedy’s The Penguin Atlas of African History in the first class and many others after that. It will be on reserve in Langson, but it will useful to have a copy with you in class so you can make notes directly on the maps (it is available new from Amazon.com for under $10; used from the UCI bookstore for the same price). I will also project maps, and you can share with classmates. So don’t let the absence of the book keep you from class on Tuesday. We will likely get through the first nine maps (to 660 B.C.E.) in the first class. Feel free to take a look at those, and familiarize yourself with the accompanying text (though there is not a formal reading assignment for Tuesday). Don’t be alarmed by the long time span. We’ll cover a lot of deep background in the first week, but the majority of the course deals with events after 1000 C.E.

Please read the syllabus (or carefully browse the course website, which presents the information in another format) before class.

I look forward to meeting you all on Tuesday.