For more than a thousand years, people, ideas, and commodities have moved along an evolving cultural and commercial contact zone linking Oman and Bahrain to the East Africa coast via the Indian Ocean. European imperial expansion provided the impulse for Africans in the vicinity of Zanzibar (an island off the East African coast) to invite Omani Arabs to establish a formal relationship, culminating in the incorporation of an East African community into an Omani Arab imperial stronghold. Residents of Bahrain have dived for pearls in the island’s surrounding waters and sold them to commercial partners in the Indian Ocean world for more than a thousand years. During the nineteenth century, Bahrain was the center of a pearling economy in the Gulf region that dominated the global market in the production of pearls, and to meet this demand in drew heavily on the labor of East African communities. This OCS program explores the varied and complex historical interactions among Africans and Arabs in the Gulf with a focus on Oman and Bahrain in the past and present. It highlights the role that these peoples have played in the development of a distinctive set of trading and familial networks, maritime and musical cultures, laboring and ruling classes, and migration patterns.
Through exploration of the content and design of archeological, museum, and other heritage sites and dialogue with scholars, artists, heritage practitioners, merchants, and pearl divers along the Arabian coasts, this program offers deep and profound engagement with the past and present. Engage in comparative ethnographic study and writing. Participate in the performance of culture and practice of heritage. Question the ways that knowledge has and continues to be cultivated, disseminated, and internalized. The program offers a unique opportunity to study the ancient and living legacies of cultural and commercial contact between Africa and Arabia.
Demonstrated interest in Africana Studies. One 100-level history or Africana Studies course is highly recommended.
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, with travel to Oman, 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 284: Heritage in Africa and Arabia (6 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 Zanzibar, Oman, 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
John Thabiti Willis is associate professor of African history and Africana Studies at Carleton College. He earned a BA in Accounting at Clark Atlanta University, an MA in Africana Studies at Cornell University, and an MA and Ph.D. in African History at Emory University. He spent two years conducting research in Nigeria, one year of those as a Fulbright-Hays fellow. After completing his Ph.D., he worked as a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies.
His research interests focus on the cultural and social factors that have shaped the history of Africans and their descendants in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds during the eras of the slave trade and colonial rule. His teaching and research nurture reflection on the ways that people narrate the past, construct identity, and, like artists, act with an awareness of an audience. He has previously led off-campus study programs to South Africa and the United Arab Emirates and looks forward to introducing Carleton students to this exciting part of the world.
Students will live in hotels.
Students will visit museums, archaeological, and other heritage sites in each program location.
Program dates roughly correspond to the Carleton academic term. Specific dates will be communicated to program participants.
All Carleton-sponsored 10-week off-campus study programs charge the Carleton comprehensive fee, which includes instruction, room and board, group excursions, public transportation, medical and evacuation insurance, travel assistance, and most cultural events.
Students are responsible for books and supplies, passports and visas (when required), transportation to and from the program sites, and personal expenses and travel during the seminar. Students will receive a program-specific Additional Cost Estimate at the time of acceptance.
Student financial aid is applicable as on campus. See the Off-Campus Studies website for further information on billing, financial aid, and scholarships.
