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Sections VI- VIII

Luxor Temple: Photo by Dr. Wosene Yefru

Summer Field Studies Program in Egypt and Ethiopia (2006)
Field Studies Descriptions

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Africana Studies
Tennessee State University

VI. Field Studies I AFAS 460 (Independent Studies with variable credit)

This is one of the field studies concentration that provide students the opportunity to explore, first hand, the institutions, values and traditions of historical people. The course will examine the communality and differences of the contemporary global culture and the quest for global peace and harmony based on common culture trait.
The course is designed to allow students to work independently or in-groups on significant topics and projects not covered in other courses. Students carry out their work through a special arrangement with international organizations in Addis Ababa such as the United Nations. Several of these organizations have agreed to give seminars and lectures to our students. The students will be given access to documents and will visit their activities in the field.

Principal Topics Covered:

a) The culture or pre-industrial nations of Africa.
b) The global psychological implications of conflict.
c) The impact of colonization.
d) Traditional societies and the impact of modernization.
e) The end of the Cold War and the Magnitude of the crisis in Africa
f) The role of International Organizations, such as the African Union and the United Nations.

Rational:
This curriculum has been developed as a field study to educate students in the field of global cultural studies. Students will expand the range of their knowledge of cultural development in the past and gain fresh perspective on their own cultural assumptions of others. Since Addis Ababa is the seat of many international organizations, including the newly created Africa Union (AU), UN Economic Commission foe Africa (ECA) UNDP, UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNICEF , ILO and UNHCR, students will visit these headquarters and, as stated above, attend lectures and seminars.

VII. Field Studies II AFAS 412 Classical African Civilization.

This course is an exploration of the relation between Egypt and Greece from earliest time to the Roman era. Topics include Greek view of Egypt; ancient and modern perceptions of Egypt being an ancient African civilization; the role of Egypt in Greek myth and literature; religious syncretism and the cults of Osiris and Isis. Reading includes the period of Paleolithic and Neolithic; the development of hieroglyphics and the building of the pyramids; the ethnic background of early Egypt; the ancient Kemetic languages; the writing of historiography; theoretical framework and analysis of the ancient mathematical and the solar calendar of ancient Egypt will be extensively discussed.

Principal Topic Covered:

a) Pre-historic period: the Development of Predynastic culture
b) The Neolithic Period- Upper Kemet
c) The Neolithic period- Lower Kemet
d) The Monogenesis Theory of Mankind and the Physiological Evidence of Kemet
e) The Origin of Kemetic people
f) The Alphabet out of the Pictography
g) The Beginning of Kemetic Cosmogony
h) Mathematical and Astronomical Observation
i) The Solar Calendar of Kemet

Rational:
This curriculum has been developed as a field study to educate students in the field of classical African civilization; the course has been designed to introduce students to the major approaches to knowledge in areas of non-Western cultures and civilization.

VIII. Field Studies III AFAS 360 African Extended Family.

The curriculum of this course will include study in the extended family as a cultural form of social and political organization in Africa. There will also be study of the concept of the queen mother in ancient Egypt and contemporary Africa; the matriarchal and patriarchal forms of social structure. Since the first form of the traditional family in Africa was the extended family, emphasis is placed on the values of economic of communalism, collective work, cooperative economics, and community self-reliance. Attention is given to the family as the basic unit of social organization in African culture.

Principal Topics Covered:

a) The matriarchal essence of Egyptian royalty
b) The importance of the role of the queen-mother in Nubia, Egypt and the rest of Africa
c) The Southern matriarchal System
d) The Northern patriarchal system

Rational:
This is a field seminar addressing significant problems of historical interpretation and controversy in the study of ancient African social structures. The department offers the course for students in various concentrations or in a particular academic specialty to broaden their mind and develop their intellectual skills and habits of thought.