Seminar Questions

• How were European perceptions of ‘darkest Africa’ created? How might these perceptions have influenced health interventions in Africa?
• How have African societies approached healing, before colonialism?

Required Reading

• Curtis Keim, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind (Boulder: Westview Press, 2009), ch. 3, pg. 35-50.
• Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1750-1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pg. 34-42 and 177-82.
• Gloria Waite, ‘Public Health in Pre-Colonial East-Central Africa’, Social Science and Medicine, 24.3 (1987), pp. 197-208.

Further Reading on Precolonial Medicine

• Neil Kodesh, Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda (2010). (Chapter 3)
• Steven Feierman, John Janzen (eds.), The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (1992). (Chapters 6-8)
• Steven Feierman, ‘Struggles for Control: The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modern Africa’, African Studies Review, 28.2/3 (1985), pp. 73-147.

Further Reading on Perceptions of Africans and Racial Science

• Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989)
• Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris (eds), Race, Science, and Medicine, 1700-1960 (London, 1999).