Contemporary Southern Africa: Development Trends and Challenges
DEVS 363
300-Level Courses
3 Units
In-person
3
one-way Exclusions
Lecture, tutorial, and private study
Please note that course information listed in the Arts and Science Course Calendar supersedes any information listed on the Global Development Studies website.
For the most current course offerings, registered 91TV’s students should consult .
Course Description
This course first provides the historical and regional context necessary to understand urban southern Africa's contemporary struggles, then examines strategies to address key development challenges and how they may be creating opportunities for new ways of thinking about citizenship in South Africa and the Global South more generally.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify key aspects of southern African human and biophysical environments.
- Describe and recount core themes in the history of southern Africa.
- Identify and evaluate scholarly and activist traditions that debate the roles of race, class, gender, and environment in southern Africa.
- Discern and explain embedded assumptions in cultural and knowledge production from and about Africa.
- Critically assess factors contributing to, or frustrating, current struggles to address key development objectives in the region and in particular, Johannesburg or other urban centres.
- Conduct original research using primary documents.
- Articulate orally and in different written forms current trends and prospects for social justice in southern Africa in relation to wider debates in the Global South.
- Acquire sufficient general knowledge of the region to feel confident among African peers in an honours-level course at Wits University, Johannesburg.
- Apply critical reading skills to a wide range of sources including AI-generated text.