For active participation, you need to fulfill the following requirements: 1) Reading texts for every session; 2) comments, discussions and presentations; 3) general discussions; 4) other tasks such as analyzing primary sources. You can write a Research Paper (‘Hausarbeit’) in this seminar. In addition to 1-4), you will hand in a seminar paper related to the topics of the class. close

We will comprehend how print media can provide a valuable entry-point to understand and write African history. Being introduced to the current state of research, participants will discover that the press in Africa was full of interventions in regional and global debates on gender, race, politics and identity. Furthermore, we will sound out the potential and limitations for using newspapers as historical source. Discussing methodologies for research on print media, we will examine different approaches such as discourse analysis, content analysis, and cultural analysis. Moreover, we will try out relevant methods by reading, analyzing and interpreting primary sources. The course includes a weekly press review where participants will investigate and present articles from historical newspapers while putting in practice their respective language skills (e.g. German, English, French, Portuguese, German, Swahili, Hausa). close

The 19th and 20th century saw the rise of print media across the world. On the African continent newspapers and magazines were mainly seen by the colonial state and missionaries as a means of communication and control. However, for authors and readers, the print media provided a tool to make their voices heard and discuss politics and society. This course is dedicated to the history of print media and the shifting boundaries of the freedom of press in (post-)colonial Africa. It deals with newspapers and other periodicals published in different regions spanning a period roughly from the 1810s to the 1960s. We will learn about journalists, editors, and politics of newspapers such as the Sierra Leone Weekly News, the Drum Magazine from South Africa, the Voix du Congolais from the Belgian Congo, the Evening News from Gold Coast, and Afrika Kwetu from Zanzibar. Besides reading groundbreaking and recent studies on (mainly) print media in Africa, the seminar will focus on methodological questions. close