McGill University
Teaching
The Indian Ocean World Centre is a key contributor to McGill University’s status as a global leader in both teaching and research. As such, the IOWC is committed to putting our research into practice in the classroom. IOWC members have a strong history of integrating the novel concepts and ideas that have emerged as a result of the Centre’s research to their teaching. This has entailed a challenge to the conventional Eurocentric and colonial temporal, spatial, and thematic paradigms that dominate academic discourse, and the exploration of new paradigms and interpretations of human history and development using the highly innovatory concept of human-environment interaction as the catalyst of historical change.
Courses Taught
AFRI 598 Research Seminar in African Studies – This course uses a historical lens to examine current transitions and trends in African politics, economics, and environmental issues.
Related Research
Gooding, Philip. ‘Historic lake level variability and current disasters on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.’ Arcadia: Explorations in Environmental History, 22 (2023).
HIST 200 Intro to African History – This course introduces students to the key themes, methods, sources, and concepts in African history, drawing also on the instructor’s research on the relationship between climate variability and statehood in 19th-century eastern Africa.
Gooding, Philip. ‘Climate change and political instability in equatorial eastern Africa, 1876-84.’ International Journal of African History Studies, 55, 2 (2022): 207-29.
HIST 206 Indian Ocean World History – An introduction to the “global” system connecting eastern Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and the Far East, from the earliest times to c. 1900. There is, throughout, a special emphasis on the role of Indian Ocean Africa (IOA) in the wider Indian Ocean World (IOW).
Campbell, Gwyn. Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to 1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
HIST 213 World History, 600-200 – This course examines the trajectories of global history through the lens of long-term changes in global climatic conditions, from the Late-Antique Little Ice Age, to the current period of Global Warming.
Gooding, Philip, Cecile Dai, Riccardo Mercatali, and Daniele Battistelli. ‘Resilience and vulnerability to drought in Unyanyembe (West-Central Tanzania) in the 1830s and 1870s-90s.’ International Review of Environmental History, 9, 1 (2023): 57-73.
HIST 315 Themes in World History – This course examines how different states and societies from across the globe faced interconnected environmental crises triggered by extreme global climatic anomalies.
Gooding, Philip. ‘Droughts, famines, and chronicles: The 1780s global climatic anomalies in Highland Ethiopia.’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 53, 3 (2023): 387-405.
HIST 382 History of South Africa – This course analyses the history of South Africa from early times to the fall of Apartheid, and contextualises these themes with reference to changing human-environment relationships over the long term.
Gooding, Philip and Nadia Fekih, ‘A climate history of early Dutch settlement at Cape Town, 1652-62.’ Journal of Southern African Studies, 50, 1 (2024), 49-68.
HIST 435 The Making of the Monsoon World – A seminar course on the history of the Asian Monsoon Zone. It investigates topics such the causes and impact of environmental events, diseases, trade, slavery, and European/non-European interaction.
Campbell, Gwyn. Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to 1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2019); Machado, Pedro, Sarah Fee and Gwyn Campbell (eds). An Ocean of Cloth: Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures and the Textile Worlds of the Indian Ocean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
HIST 527 Africa and the Indian Ocean World – A seminar course that (i) challenges the conventional view that Africa formed a discrete historical entity; and (ii) examines relationship between Africa and the wider IOW from early times to c.1900 in the context of human-environment interaction.
Campbell, Gwyn. Africa and the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to 1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2019); idem (ed). Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
HIST 528 Indian Ocean World Slave Trade – A seminar course investigating the origins, structure and impact of the IOW slave trade from early times to the present day. Topics covered include enslavement, slave age and gender profiles, slave functions, reactions to slavery, slave trade structure, emancipation and the slave diaspora. Throughout comparisons are made with the Atlantic slave system.
Campbell, Gwyn and Alessandro Stanziani (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Bondage and Human Rights in Africa and Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Campbell. Gwyn (ed.). Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Campbell, Gwyn (ed.). The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (Frank Cass, 2004).
Indian Ocean World Centre 