History, Culture, and Commerce: Africa and Arabia

The Winter 2026 Africa-Arabia Program provides an incredible opportunity to realize the transformative power of a Carleton education. The program pursues this ambitious goal by challenging students to interrogate the lens through which they view and engage the world and their relationship to their peers and other knowledge producers. This program will test the limits of students’ knowledge and experience for understanding the (non-western) world, Africa and Arabia in particular – places and cultures that have long been the object of ridicule in the West. This program encourages students to make connections to people who often possess radically different ways of knowing and being in the world. The wide range of readings and activities that comprise this program will provide countless opportunities to explore a multitude of ways that history and culture shape experience and perspective.

The program is open to students of all majors who are passionate about paradigm-shifting study through travel that involves deep engagement with African and Arab societies. Students who have studied Arabic, along with those majoring in history, international relations, political science, anthropology, and African studies, are particularly encouraged to apply.

Faculty Director Thabiti Willis has extensive experience with academic programs in Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania and Arab Gulf States of Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. He is deeply committed to collaborative international education and looks forward to introducing another group of Carleton students to this fascinating part of the world.

Learning Goals

• To learn about the varied and contested notions of African and Arab identities that circulate among communities in Zanzibar, Sharjah, and Bahrain in the past and present through research, conversation, performance, and experience.
• To learn about the importance of a cultural and commercial gateway linking Africa and Arabia to the broader Indian Ocean and Western Worlds.
• To learn how to envision, design, execute, and evaluate in-depth individual and group research projects that draw on a wide range of archival, archeological, ethnographic, artistic, and visual and material culture.
• To learn how to question the assumptions that researchers and collaborators bring to ethnographic encounters while maintaining a spirit of mutual respect and collegiality.
• To develop an acute awareness of some of the ways that race and culture are understood in different national contexts.
• To nurture the ability to navigate different cultural contexts with humility and confidence.
• To learn about and apply an African Diaspora/Africa-Arabia framework for studying the following places UAE, Bahrain, Zanzibar.
• To use historical, diasporic, archeological, ethnographic, literary, philosophical, cultural, and artistic analyses for studying the African diaspora in Arabia and the Arab diaspora in Zanzibar.  
• To explain how the knowledge and experience amassed during the term transform student thinking about the region’s complexity and diversity, and disrupt widely held stereotypes. 

Prerequisites

Students should show demonstrated interest in Africana Studies. One 100-level history or Africana Studies course is highly recommended.

Course of Study (18 Credits)

HIST 282: African Diaspora in Arabia (6 credits)

This course offers a broad historical overview of African men’s and women’s experiences as religious, political, and military leaders, as merchants and poets, and in agricultural and maritime industries in Arabia. Situated primarily in Bahrain, the course will examine longstanding historical, cultural, and commercial exchanges between Africa and the Gulf from medieval times to the present day. The course will question the ideologies that assume that Africa and Arabia represent racial and cultural difference.
Instructor: Thabiti Willis and Local Faculty

HIST 283: Thinking Historically in the Present (2 credits)

This course explores how people in the countries associated with the Africa-Arabia program use notions of the past, heritage, and culture to forge national identities. It involves foundational reading material based on available field trips and experts. Students also will be tested on knowledge that they amass from a range of sources by the end of the first week of the term. These sources include lectures, museums, and local archives. Students will demonstrate this knowledge during presentations before an audience of their peers and scholars, heritage practitioners, and staff from institutional partners. 
Instructor: Thabiti Willis

HIST 284: Heritage in Africa and Arabia (4 credits)

Through lectures, readings, and extensive site visits to museums and archaeological sites, this course examines the rich cultural heritage of East Africa and Arabia. Students will investigate Persian, Arab, Indian, and Islamic sites in Sharjah, Zanzibar, and Bahrain, reflecting on the deep influence of the Indian Ocean on the region’s historical trading systems and modern-day relations. The course also examines the influence of various European colonial powers during the era in which they ruled or wielded influence.
Instructors: Thabiti Willis and Local Faculty

HIST 285: Critical Historical Research Methods (6 credits)

This course focuses on ethnographic research and writing with an emphasis on the practice of fieldwork. Students will conduct group research projects that include actively guiding and evaluating the work of their peers. The content of these projects will include maritime activities, health, music, economics, and heritage. Students will learn the benefits and challenges of examining oral tradition, oral history, poetry, visual art, material culture, and embodied practice. Service or experiential learning is another major point of emphasis. Students will develop their ability to question their knowledge, method, evidence, interpretation, experience, ethics, and power.
Instructors: Thabiti Willis and Local Faculty

Excursions

Students will visit a spice plantation in Zanzibar, college/university campuses and museums.

Housing

Students will live in dorms, hotels, and homestay residences in Stone Town, Zanzibar.

Experiential Learning

• Archival, ethnographic, artistic, and archeological evidence and methodologies
• Homestay residence in Stone Town, Zanzibar
• Spice plantation in Zanzibar
• Ethnographic experiences of food, perfumery, and dress as key features of culture
• Visits to college/university campuses and museums
• Study and engage in human relationship and the natural environment