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AFST 2984
Digital Africa

Spring 2016, M W 2:30-3:45

Norris 209
Instructor: Ali Colleen Neff
E-Mail: alineff@vt.edu
Office: McBryde 510
Office Hours: T Th 3:30-5:30 p.m.,
W by appointment

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Overview
In this African media and cultural studies course, we will examine the
relationship of social media, mobile technologies, global connectivity, and
the digital arts to the emergence of cultural undergrounds.The course will
offer students the opportunity to consider the ways in which globally
marginalized communities engage and are engaged by digital technologies. As contemporary studies of digital culture show, the global digital
media network is structuring new modes of global exchange and relation.
This course both outlines these contemporary networks and asks how
cultural practitioners in Africa and its diaspora use these technologies to
create media worlds of their own, through adaptations, innovations, and
purposeful off-label uses of these media.

Materials

Goals
*understand emerging modes of digital communication as they structure uneven global social and economic relations!
*encounter important readings in the study of digital globalization and
its availability to Africans, from social media, to coding, to digital photography and film!
*learn about African engagements with digital media as they relate to
previous forms of global media engagement, from the African dimension of the Arab Springs twitter presence to the use of CGI effects in
Nigerian film!
*conduct original case studies in African community and/or national
engagements with digital culture, or featuring original research on the
work of global media innovators from Africa and/or its diaspora!
*build a collective website collecting these case studies using available resources at Virginia Tech!
We will gauge our progress toward these goals by checking in with course keywords
(listed for each week) and through a series of discursive writing assignments leading to
our final research project.

Milestones

Requirements
1. You will be graded on a series of five written assignments, a final test,
and course participation.
2.Complete and critically engage all required reading and media
3.Complete all assignments on time and with intellectual and academic
integrity
4.Participate fully in the classroom community
5.Communicate your needs and issues with your classmates and teachers responsibly.
6.Turn off all internet and social media when in the classroom (very important)
7.Grow intellectually, as an emerging authority on the world of culture,
and as a critical thinker and writer

Course materials for this multimedia

course can be found by class date in this
syllabus.
1.Most materials are available as articles
through our Blackboard site, or ebooks through VT Libraries
2.Check the CANVAS site calendar and
online syllabus while preparing for
every class to find materials, discussions and more.
3.It is recommended to print these materials and mark them up, and to engage
them specifically in class discussion.
Unit One

Understand how new cultural movements emerge, and practice methods in

writing about them
Unit Two

Engage basic concepts and practices in

media studies and articulate critical arguments about how processes of power
work through them
Unit Three

Think about how digital media create

emerging global communities and develop a personal style in writing about
them

Attendance, Participation, Delays

1.Attendance is required at all lectures

and discussion sections; more than

two unexcused absences will result
in a full final grade letter grade
deduction
2.While all students prefer different
modes of engagement, participation in classroom discussion is a
must; communicate with me if you
have issues
3.Late work will, unless excused by a
documented medical emergency,
be docked a full letter grade per
day
4.As a rule, communicate responsibly
and mindfully about any issues
ahead of time

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Timeline for Course Progression: Digital Africa

Week #

Theme

Preliminary Readings/
Materials (To be
developed)

Key Concepts

Week 1:!
INTRO!
1/20

Mapping Digital Africa

Africa is a Country:
African Media Criticism
site

Defining Africa and the African

Diaspora, Defining digital media
networks

UNIT ONE: MAPPING DIGITAL GLOBALIZATION

Week 2!
1/25

African Futures!

Check out Futuristic

African Digital Art: !
Read about African and
Afro-Futurism here!
Read about Pumzi by
Wanuri Kahiu here

Future, Futurism, Futurity

Week 2!
1/27

Western notions of a
digital global utopia

Read this first Magazine

Issue, of The Whole
Earth Catalog Project

The Global Village, Whole/

Global Systems Thinking
utopia

Week 3!
2/1

Academic approaches
to media studies

Marshall McLuhan, Media is the Message (read

the introduction of this
books PDF, skim a few of
the examples)

Global Media, communication

Week 3!
2/3

African Communicaton
and media

Read Chapter 5:
Immaterial Urbanism
from Brian Larkins
Signal and Noise on
CANVAS

Communication infrastructures,
postcoloniality

assessment! Short in-class presentation on an example of African digital cultures. Due 2/8
Due 2/8
Week 4!
2/8

Building the Global

digital infrastructure

Nick Couldry: Media, Society, World on CANVAS

Networks, development theory

Week 4!
2/10

The Digital Divide

Guardian article on the

Digital Divide

Digital divide,
underdevelopment

UNIT TWO: HISTORICAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION IN AFRICA

Week 5!
2/15

Traditional Modes of
African Communication

Ali Colleen Neff,

Week 5!
2/17

Traditional Modes of
African Communication

Meribe, African
Communication
Systems on CANVAS

Traditional communicative
media, community mediation,
culture and aesthetics
indigeneity, disposession,
displacement

assessment! 1500-word essay on the relationship of traditional/local/community communicaDue 2/22

tive forms and contemporary uses of global media technologies 2/22

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Timeline for Course Progression: Digital Africa
Week #

Theme

Preliminary Readings/
Materials (To be
developed)

Key Concepts

Week 6!
2/22

African Radio/Cinema/
TV, Popular Culture

From Brian Larkin, Signal

and Noise

Off-label uses of global media

infrastructures, self-writing

Week 6!
2/24

African Radio/Cinema/
TV, Popular Culture

Chapter 7, on digital
production, From Jesse
Weaver Shipley, Living
the Hiplife on CANVAS

Popular culture, popular arts

Week 7!
2/29

Issues with access to

technologies

Communication
Infrastructure Program
(World Bank)

differential access, uneven

development, the digital divide

Week 7!
3/2

Questions of
Underdevelopment

Read all chapter

overviews (there are
many short ones!) from
this Underdevelopment
textbook

underdevelopment

assessment! Blog Entry: 800 word essay on the role of digital technologies in Third World
Due 3/14
development: Possibilities and potential problems
Week 8!
3/14

Mobile Technologies

mobile technology, immediacy

and global communication,

Rudy De Walae,

Week 8!
3/16

Mobile Technologies

Read this Pew report on

Cell phones in Africa!

nomadic culture and global

flows

UNIT THREE: EMERGING PROJECTS IN DIGITAL AFRICA

Week 9!
3/22

National Engagements
with Digital Economies

African national websites,

Pan-African digital
enterprise and economic
development (to be
determined)

political economy, PanAfricanism, new economies,

Black entrepreneurship

Week 9!
3/23

Neocolonialism and
Mobile Media

Read Guns, Money and

Cell Phones!
Look over this list of mobile network operators
throughout Africa

neocolonialism, postcoloniality,
resource extraction, capital
extraction, inport substitution

assessment

Preliminary Research: two-page paper outlining final project topic, potential interviewees, background contextual research OR a creative project proposal on
the country/group/practitioner/idea of your choosing Due 3/28

Week 10!
3/28

African Popular Cultures and Digital Globalization

Brad Weiss, excerpt,

(ON
CANVAS)

Glocal (global/local) cultures

Week 10!
3/30

African Popular Cultures and Digital Globalization

Ali Colleen Neff, Roots,

Routes and
Rhizomes (on CANVAS)

production, representational
impoerialism, digital sampling,
web 2.0

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Timeline for Course Progression: Digital Africa
Week #

Theme

Preliminary Readings/
Materials (To be
developed)

Key Concepts

Week 11!
4/4

Social media,
migration, and activism

Read: The truth about

Twitter (the Revolution)

US State Department,
geopolitics, surveillance

Week 11!
4/6

Social media,
migration, and activism

Read this UN report on

Social media in Africa

"off-label" technologies

Week 12!
4/11

African Women and

Digital Empowerment

FATIMAH KELLEHER,
The future is smart, but
it is equal?

marginalized communities, digital empowerment, global

women and programming/web
design

Week 12!
4/13

African Women and

Digital Empowerment

Jennifer Radlo, African

Cyberfeminism

cyberfeminism, digital
blackness, digital otehrness

Week 13!
4/18

Youth Cultures and

African Futurity

EDM/Digital Dance
Music

tba

Week 13!
4/20

Youth Cultures and

African Futurity

Amateur Film and

Media

Week 14!
4/25

NGO interventions,
possibilities,
investments and
careers

Read about the US

State Department
Programs

Week 14!
4/27

Student-led interests
(bring in one example)
ORIGINAL STUDENT RESEARCH: EMERGING PROJECTS IN DIGITAL AFRICA

Week 15!
5/2, 5/4!
Assessment!
and Review

Final research project: and a 15-minute Professional/multimedia presentation:

original research with an African Digital Media entrepreneur, artist, or media
practitioner, AND/OR profile ofor a start toa national or transnational African
digital business, cultural, or organizational project. This will be in the form of a
multimedia webpage (to be developed with CIDER) that profiles your topic of
choice and integrated into a course website that will be available at www.digitalundergrounds.org

Graded Item Number of points (of 100 total)

Enriched Assignment Sheets will be available for each assignment as it is presented in class
25
Class participation (attendance, discussion).
10
Short in-class presentation 2/8
25
1500-word cortical essay 2/22
10
1,000-word Critical Essay on Digital Subculture Case Study Topic 3/27
20
Digital Subculture Case Study (in the form of a digital project)4/8

In-class presentation of your Digital Project, including visuals/multimedia [date]; this will be 10
a 10-minute professional conference-style presentation with 5 minutes for questions 5/2