Seminar Questions

• How have people, in Africa and Europe, reconciled medical humanitarian heroes with the reality of their colonial past?
• How has the language of humanitarianism been employed differently/similarly by colonial states and newly emerging, independent African governments/movements? Is it easier to untangle the motivations of state humanitarianism when the government in question is fighting against colonialism?
• How did medical humanitarian practices change during decolonization and the early decades of African independence? How did they remain the same?

Required Reading

• Jennifer Johnson Onyedum, ‘‘Humanize the Conflict’: Algerian Health Care Organizations and Propaganda Campaigns, 1954-62’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 44 (2012), 713-731.
• Bertrand Taithe and Katherine Davis, ‘‘Heroes of Charity?’ Between Memory and Hagiography: Colonial Medical Heroes in the Era of Decolonisation’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 42.5 (2014), 912-935.
• Barbra Mann Wall, Into Africa: A Transnational History of Catholic Medical Missions and Social Change (2015), pg. 120-151. [on course extracts]
  

Further Reading