HUM 2033: Intro to the Humanities II Okpala

Guide for Jude Okpala's Intro to the Humanities II course.

Encounter: European Outreach & Expansion

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Open Road Media, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central.
ISBN: 9781497659698
This is the classic novel that inspired Apocalypse Now. A European trading concern hires Marlow to pilot a boat up the Congo River in search of Kurtz--a first-class ivory agent and the manager of the company's highly profitable Inner Station--who is believed to be on his deathbed. With a handful of pilgrims as his passengers and a crew of cannibals, Marlow steams his way into the African interior. The terrifying discovery he makes at the end of his journey and the horrors he witnesses along the way have thrilled and disturbed readers for more than a century.

Smith, David. “Colonial Encounters through the Prism of Music: A Southern African Perspective.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, vol. 33, no. 1, 2002, pp. 31–55. JSTOR, JSTOR, doi:10.2307/4149785.
Using both casual and more sustained instances, this article examines how music sharpens the profile of the early encounters between maritime explorers and Khoi culture, the attempts (c.1840) of missionaries to evangelize the Zulu, and the late-nineteenth-century collision of pioneer settlers and Ndebele people. In each case, the evidence of music mediates a particular form of colonial subjectivity (mentalité), without excluding the persistence in time and across varied circumstances of typical responses to music and its ascribed meanings. In each case, the 'value' of music has to be interpreted both as an emanation of human desires and a social fact that confronts the displaced northerners

PBS. Encounters | Kanopy. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
"See how seafaring advances and a thirst for trade and exploration sent human beings around the planet. Distant and disparate cultures met for the first time, and art became the great interface by which civilizations understood each other." 54 mins
Illuminations Media. Eastern Encounters at the V&A: The Meeting 0f Asia & Europe 1500-1800 | Kanopy. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.
"In the three centuries after the explorer Vasco de Gama first landed in India in 1492, meetings, trade and exchanges of all kinds flourished between the peoples of Europe and Asia. These encounters and the hybrid cultures that developed have left an extraordinary legacy of exquisite works of art and compelling human stories. Produced alongside the V&A's landmark 2004 exhibition, Encounters explores both the western fascination for the exotic materials of Asia as well as the interest in European technologies in India, China and Japan. The film considers the religious and diplomatic dimensions of the story, the immensely profitable trading networks and the fantasies imagined of faraway cultures by both Europeans and Asians." 23 mins