AMAH EDOH: How is Africa made to mean?

How has it been made to mean, and what is associated

with this idea of Africa?

I mean, it's weird to talk about it as this one place,

but that's exactly the point.

How is it that we've come to talk about Africa

as a thing, a place in the world, when in fact, it

includes over 50 countries, and thousands of languages,

and millions of people, right?

SARAH HANSEN: Today on the podcast, a conversation

about teaching a categorically misunderstood concept, Africa.

Our guest today found inspiration

for bold new ways of teaching through her own experiences

as a student.

She recognized throughout her education

the ability for teachers to empower or inhibit

their students.

AMAH EDOH: What's made the biggest difference for me

in the classroom as a student has

been instructors who made me feel

like I had something to offer.

And the lack of that does a lot of damage, right?

When you're having instructors who

make you feel like you have nothing to offer,

that's actually damaging.

It's not just neutral.

It's damaging.

So it's really important for me to sort

of valorize students' voices and to show them

that they're doing it.

SARAH HANSEN: Welcome to Chalk Radio,

a podcast about inspired teaching at MIT.

I'm your host Sarah Hansen from MIT OpenCourseWare.

In this episode, I take you with me

to meet Amah Edoh, an Assistant Professor of African Studies

at MIT.

Professor Edoh's research centers

around the complex array of cultures, traditions, nations,

and ideas known as Africa, and how Africa as a concept

is produced through material practices,

things like music, ritual, performance, and dress.

We'll learn how she engages students

in unpacking the concept of Africa

through the very creative practices that make it.

So what does it look like to challenge

the meaning we've prescribed to a place as rich and diverse

as Africa?

We'll pick up our conversation with Professor Edoh's

explanation.

AMAH EDOH: You know, we're used to speaking of Africa

as a place--

and not just any place, but a place

that's burdened with a lot of ideas and values

that historically have been negative, to put it simply.

And so what my research and my teaching centers on

is about interrogating that.

So first, making visible the ways that Africa

is made to mean, so that's what I mean with Africa

as a category of thought.

To understand that Africa means more than just

this geographical space.

It's also all these countries and all

this very complicated history.

But then to see the ways that this valence

that "Africa," quote, unquote, has,

the way that that plays out in all aspects of life, really.

So broadly speaking, it's like the question

of thinking about Africa as category of thought

is understanding the politics that are involved in engaging

with the continent in an intellectual manner,

politically, and so on.

In this course, we use creative practices-- so the arts,

popular culture--

as a way in for two reasons.

One, because there's a way that, you know,

I'm not crazy about the term "popular culture"

because it's a way that it seems to devalue it,

and it's just kind of fun.

Yet, it animates so much of our daily experiences,

no matter who you are and no matter

where you are in the world.

So on one hand, the purpose or goal of using this as a way

into asking these more kind of theoretical and philosophical

questions about Africa as a category of thought

is to recognize that these everyday practices are actually

extremely rich and just as political

as any other form of engagement.

But then more specifically to Africa

is the fact that right now, Africa

is sort of having this moment where its signification is

appearing to shift.

Part of it is understanding whether it's actually shifting.

But where all the stories we had about the continent

used to be about war, and disease, and famine,

and dysfunction, simply speaking,

now, there is also another discourse where Africa's hot.

Africa is sort of the future.

Africa is where all of these new possibilities are playing out.

So whether it's within the business realm

or it's within the arts, it's this idea

that Africa is the last frontier.

So there is a way that Africa's got a new prominence

on the global stage, and that a lot of that

is playing out in the realm of what

I call creative practice, so the arts and popular culture.

And that's why I thought that it would be a particularly

good angle to take in addressing these sort of loftier

questions, and seeing the ways that they play out

in the day-to-day.

And also through beautiful and pleasant objects,

and pleasant things to engage with, things that are moving,

and that are inspiring, which I think

opens us up to thinking and to processing differently when

we're moved in this other way.

SARAH HANSEN: It makes me wonder how

this specific case of looking at Africa as a category of thought

and looking at creative practices,

did it open for students new ways of seeing

the world in general?

Does this kind of teaching offer new pathways

for critical thinking that's applicable in many fields?

AMAH EDOH: I'd hope so.

I mean, my god, like, that's our dream as educators, right?

That whatever we do in the classroom in this very limited

setting or this limited scale manifests for our students

so that they're able to take it into their experiences way

beyond the classroom and beyond the specific topic

of the course.

When I think about the students that I

had in the class last year, it was about 12 students,

and about half of them were African, so Africans

of different variety.

So Africans from the continent, Africans who were

first-generation Americans.

And then the other half were American

of varying ethnicities.

And I would say that for all of them--

well, certainly for my African students,

it was a way that they, I think it's safe to say

were there because they were interested in engaging

with this part of their experience

in a different realm, to actually study it

in the classroom instead of it just being kind of what they're

immersed in their day-to-day lives

when they're back home, and so on.

And for the non-African students, some of them

were going to be working in Africa during the summer,

or had just come back from being on the continent,

and just wanted to kind of learn more generally

about the continent.

So to what extent did being in the class

broaden their perspectives or kind of give them

tools that they could use beyond this specific topic

after the class?

I think the class might have helped them get language

to articulate some of these questions

about power, essentially.

And if not always to find answers,

to at least be able to notice patterns

and sort of describe what they're seeing.

So often, we have a feeling that something's not right,

or that there's something going on here,

but we don't quite have the language for it.

And I think that that's what a class like this aims to do

is to give students the language to articulate

these things that they might be picking up

on in different ways.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SARAH HANSEN: So what does it look like to empower students

to follow a feeling, to develop the language to negotiate

that feeling into theory?

AMAH EDOH: So we met once a week and we focused each session

on a different form of cultural production,

or a different theme.

So we had performance.

And then within performance, we had performance as dress,

and then we had literature, and we had film,

and we had science and technology.

And so for each unit, new questions came up.

But the thread that cut across them

was the same, which was a question of,

how is Africa being made to mean in the world,

and how are African cultural producers engaging

in that process of making Africa to mean through their practice?

And, of course, and the questions

that come up that are, like, what

are the specific issues that arise with this particular form

of cultural production, right?

So for theater, what does it mean, for instance,

to produce a play for an audience in Nigeria

to can perform that play in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

What are the politics of that?

What are the questions that come up

in carrying this object from one space into the next?

The goal was to both reflect through each of these cases

this underlying question that the course was after,

but then to show the nuances or the specificities that

apply to each particular form of creative production.

And then ultimately to say, what do we

gain by juxtaposing these different things?

What can we learn about ideas of technological innovation

in or for the continent by looking at them

alongside the production of ethnographic portraits

in the 19th century in South Africa, for instance?

Is there a way that these two cases

can elucidate one another?

And I think yes.

I mean, there is a reason that I did it that way.

But yeah, and I think that there was also another agenda

behind it is that being at MIT in particular, where we tend

to fetishize technology and consider it sometimes

in the realm outside of other material

practices, other ways of knowing,

one of my personal missions is to show that it's no different.

They're just different.

They're all objects.

They're all ways of doing.

They're always of knowing, right?

So whether we're talking about plant healing

or developing the next nano whatever,

we can think about these things next to each other,

no matter where they're happening.

And so I think the ways that case studies are

useful is that they allow you to both kind of dig

deep with that particular situation,

bring questions to the fore, and then next time, kind of

consider the ways that those questions can apply,

or when new questions arise when you

look at a different situation.

SARAH HANSEN: You mentioned performance.

And could you speak a little bit about how

students attended performances out

in the world as part of this course?

AMAH EDOH: Yeah.

So that kind of has to happen serendipitously.

It just so happened to be that at the time

that I was teaching this class, this show came, was--

I don't even remember how I found out about it.

I think from a mailing list or a friend told me.

I don't know, but this play was coming to Harvard.

And similarly, that Alain Gomis was going

to be coming to Harvard also.

And so in the case of Alain Gomis,

I had just seen his film at a conference a few months before,

one of his films, and absolutely adored it,

and so I'd wanted to teach it.