History 197j/201n                                                                                 Andrew Apter

Bunche 2181 Monday  3-5:50    Bunche 10254  5-3070

Spring 03 Office Hrs. Th. 2:00-4:00

aapter@international.edu

 

 

The Historiography of Yoruba Culture

 

The seminar offers an intensive introduction to the historiography of Yoruba culture with four basic goals in mind.  First, we will examine how Yoruba scholars have written about themselves, focusing on how they appropriated missionary and colonial discourses to construct Yoruba identity within a historical project of cultural nationalism.  Second, students should master some of the basic studies of Yoruba myth, kinship, politics, etc. to become fluent in an earlier style of social anthropology with its own history of representations.  Third, will we examine Yoruba forms of historicity in gender, ritual, politics and popular music.  And finally, we will explore multimedia ethnographic methods to present and analyze data in digital documents.

 

Students will take a mid-term exam and write a final essay (8-10 pp) on a topic cleared by me.  Graduate students can write one longer paper.

 

 

        COURSE OUTLINE

 

WEEK

 

1.  Writing Yoruba History and Culture

 

2.  Ethnogenesis and Cultural Nationalism

 

3.  Myth and Genealogy as Spatiotemporal Frames

 

4.  Sacred Kingship and Orisha Worship

 

5.  Markets as Historically Female Domains

 

6.  Colonialism, Gender and Sexuality

 

7.  Historical Memory in Yoruba Ritual

 

8.  Activating the Past: The Language of Àse

 

9.  The Historicity of Ifa Divination

 

10. Jùjú Music as Historical Practice

 

                     

 

 

                     

Basic Texts (All Readings are on College Reserve—all articles are on electronic reserve).

 

Required

Apter, Andrew. Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. U of Chicago

Press, 1992.

Bascom, William. Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa. Indiana UP,

1969.

Matory, J. Lorand. Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo

Yoruba Religion.  U of Minnesota Press, 1994.

Oyewumi, Oyeronke. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses.

U of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Waterman, Christopher. Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music. U Of

Chicago Press, 1990.

 

 

     READINGS

 

March 31: WRITING YORUBA HISTORY AND CULTURE

S. Johnson, History of the Yorubas, pp. 3-25.

J.F. Ade. Ajayi, “How Yoruba Was Reduced to Writing,” Odu 8 (1960):49-58.

 

April 7: ETHNOGENESIS AND EARLY CULTURAL NATIONALISM

J.D.Y. Peel, "The Cultural Work of Yoruba Ethnogenesis," in Tonklin, McDonald and Chapman (eds),             History and Ethnicity.  Routlege, 1989. Pp. 198-215.

J. L. Matory, “The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yoruba Nation,”

Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1) 1999:72-103.

 

April 14: MYTH AND GENEALOGY AS SPATIOTEMPORAL FRAMES

P.C. Lloyd, "The Yoruba Lineage," Africa 25 (3) 1955:235-51.

W.B. Schwab "Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba," Africa 25 (4) 1955:352-74. 

A. Apter, Black Critics and Kings, pp. 1-34

 

April 21: SACRED KINGSHIP AND FEMALE POWER

A. Apter, Black Critics...  pp. 97-116.

J. Matory,  Sex and the Empire, pp. 126-169.

 

April 28: MARKETS AS HISTORICALLY FEMALE DOMAINS 

B. I. Belasco, The Entrepeneur as Culture Hero. New York: Praeger, 1980.

A. Apter    "Atinga Revisited: Yoruba Witchcraft and the Cocoa Economy, 1950-1," in Comaroff and             Comaroff (eds), Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial  Africa. Chicago             UP, 1993. Pp. 111-128.

Hodder, B. W. "The Yoruba Rural Market." In P. Bohannan and G. Dalton (eds.) Markets in Africa,

Northwestern UP, 1962. Pp. 103-117.       [Mid-term exam in class, undergrads only]

 

May 5: COLONIALISM, GENDER AND AND SEXUALITY

O. Oyewumi, The Invention of Women.

 

May 12: HISTORICAL MEMORY IN YORUBA RITUAL

A. Apter, Black Critics and Kings, chs. 6,7,8.

J. Matory, Sex and the Empire, pp. 170-215.

 

May 19: ACTIVATING THE PAST: THE LANGUAGE OF ÀSE

A. Apter, Black Critics and Kings, ch. 5. 

     --   "Discourse and its Disclosures: Yoruba Women and the Sanctity of Abuse," Africa 68 (1) 1998:68-            97.

K. Barber, "Oríkì, Women and the Proliferation and Merging of Orisa.” Africa 60 (3) 1990:313-337.

 

May 26: THE HISTORICITY OF IFA DIVINATION

W. Bascom: Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa.

J.D.Y. Peel, “The Pastor and the Babalawo: Interaction of Religions in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland,”

Africa 60 (3) 1990:338-369.

 

June 2: JÙJÚ MUSIC AS HISTORICAL PRACTICE

C. Waterman, Jùjú: A Social History and Ethnography of a Popular African Music.