What is Africa? This is a significant intellectual question that this course will seek to explore. Can the continent be confined to its physical and geographical materiality? Is the African continent a discourse, a project, a memory, or a desire? Each developed, envisioned or expressed by its inhabitants as well as the members of its diaspora? Surveying both specific historical periods and contemporary times, students attending this course will be invited to examine, journey through, and interpret the various historical, political, and cultural elements, figures, and movements that have contributed to shaping global visions and understandings of the African continent. Drawing from a variety of sources (books, scholarly articles, music and films), this survey will cover the Americas through systematic comparative analyses. Students will be encouraged to reflect on a variety of articulations of blackness and africanness among people of African descent through different historical periods and locations.