Advanced undergraduate and graduate students, PhD students
Part 1 – China-Africa Engagements: Narratives, Myths and Realities
China is Africa's biggest trading partner and source of financing for infrastructure development. More African students are studying at Chinese universities than at French, UK and US universities. Political parties, militaries and bureaucrats in Africa are engaging with their counterparts in China – exchanging ideas and building networks. Those are the official narratives, but how are these political, economic and social engagements between China and Africa perceived, beyond the state, in China, Africa and the West? Is China colonising Africa, debt-trapping the continent? Are Chinese products and university degrees inferior? Are Chinese racists, and are Africans xenophobic? Making use of various academic and non-academic sources on China-Africa engagements, this course will explore the representations of Africa-China political and social relations in China, the United States, and select countries in Africa and the European Union. Through a combination of interactive lectures, discussions and group projects, participants will examine the different framings and representations of political and social engagements between China and Africa, and explore strategies of reframing the complex relationship between the two.
Part 2 – Asian Presence in Africa: Examples from East and Southern Africa
This course will begin with a general overview of the historical forces that coalesced to create the Indian diaspora in Eastern and Southern Africa. It will then discuss the Indian paradoxical presence in Eastern Africa, especially in their initial aspirations as sub imperialists. It will proceed to discuss their role in the decolonisation and nationalist politics and conclude with the crisis of independence that culminated in their exodus from Eastern Africa. Using Asian diaspora literatures in East and Southern Africa, this course will provide an overview of Asian presence in Africa. It will demonstrate how these literatures have framed conversations between peoples, cultures, ideas and regions. The course will address the ambivalent and diasporic histories of Asians in imperial and postcolonial East and South Africa and analyse how Asian cultures consciously construct ambivalent diasporic subjectivities as the basis of new forms of African Asian identities. We will demonstrate how such ambivalence reveals itself in the way Asian diaspora writing disavow dominant, nationalistic, even binaristic accounts of colonial relationships and create, instead, a narrative that skirts the borderlines of both colonial and nationalist discourses. In a sense, this constitutes a strategy of contesting both colonial history and the hi/stories of the postcolonial nation-state, especially in East Africa. But the consequence of this strategy is that while histories of the Indian people in Africa are uncovered as "scraps" of imperial history, on the other hand, their narration tends to silence those aspects of Asian experiences that align them to African anti-colonial resistance.
For more detailed information on the course content and lecturers, please visit our website.
A very good command of the English language (preferably level B2) is a requirement for your participation in the course. Please provide proof of your language level by submitting a language certificate (e.g., TOEFL, IELTS, Cambridge) with your application.
Please submit your application and supporting documents (CV, motivation letter, enrolment certificate and proof of language proficiency) via our website:
http://www.summerschool.uni-bayreuth.de/
Please contact us by e-mail if you have any questions regarding the application procedure.
Included in the programme fee:
Examples of our events and social programme:
Language course/short course
