by: Professor Amy Patterson
Throughout the Advent 2024 semester, four small groups of students in POLS 227 (Africa in World Politics) met on different Sunday afternoons in the home of Amy Patterson (“Dr. P.”) to eat a lunch of Yassa Poulet (a Senegalese dish of chicken and rice), fruit, and brownies and to discuss an African novel. (The CfT mini-grant paid for the food. In return for the Sunday afternoon “class time,” there was no class before Thanksgiving.) After the discussion, students gave a classroom presentation about the book in which they analyzed it using classroom concepts.
Ultimately, each group then made a recommendation about the book to their peers: Should you read it? (Most said, “Yes.”) Students also wrote an individual paper in which they analyzed the book using course readings. The informal meetings over lunch provided the opportunity not only to discuss the book, but also to learn more about each other and to hear about students’ hobbies, majors, and interests. Students also had lots of questions about Dr. P’s time in Peace Corps in Senegal or her work conducting research and teaching in Ghana, Zambia, and Tanzania.
During the book discussions, students shared unique insights. (Indeed, the conversations even led Dr. P. to re-evaluate her opinion on some of the books.) One book—David Diop’s Beyond the Door of No Return—generated a very lively conversation, as participants and Dr. P. debated how the author wove the themes of colonial exploitation and cultural resistance into his compact novel. Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (about Nigerian journalists, an oil executive’s kidnapped wife, and environmental destruction) enabled environmental studies majors to weave knowledge from other courses into the conversation. And students found Fatin Abbas’s Ghost Season (about the second Sudanese Civil War) helped them better understand the root causes of Sudan’s current war. For Dr. P. (who loves to read African novels), the Sunday afternoon discussions were rich movements of learning alongside her students.
Prof. Amy Patterson was the recipient of a CfT mini-grant in Advent 2024.