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“How has Africa been made to mean?” For a long time, Africa has been depicted in the arts and media as a place of famine and dysfunction. More recently, the continent has been increasingly portrayed as the next frontier for business and artistic innovation. In this episode, we talk with MIT Professor of African Studies M. Amah Edoh about how Africa, as a concept, is produced through cultural practices--things like music, film, theatre, clothing, etc. She shares how she engages MIT students with this concept in 21G.026 Global Africa: Creative Cultures, a course she’s shared on MIT OpenCourseWare. Topics include how her own experiences with formal education shape how and why she tries to value students’ voices in the classroom, redefining students’ relationships to scholarly texts to make academia feel less alienating, giving students language to articulate relationships of power, encouraging students to experiment with creative cultural production, getting off campus to experience cultural performance in a social context, and living the life of a new faculty member (spoiler alert: it’s a lot like engaging in marathon improvisational theatre, and it’s exhausting!). Relevant Resources: MIT OpenCourseWare The OCW Educator Portal  Professor Edoh’s course on OCW “The Price of Love” [PDF] (Wedding Project) by Nwamaka Amobi and Gabrielle Ballard Professor Edoh’s faculty page  Blog post on Professor’s Edoh’s approach to creating a supportive academic culture Faculty profile: 3 Questions with M. Amah Edoh on Africa and Innovation  Spotify playlist  Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with Us If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you!  On our site On Facebook On Twitter On Instagram Stay Current Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter.