Race & Politics in South Africa

Immerse Yourself in the Culture of South Africa

Travel to Cape Town over winter break to explore the history and ongoing legacies of apartheid in South Africa through seminars, guest lectures and tours in and around the city. Once students return to Columbia, they will enroll in a spring seminar on “Race & Politics in South Africa,” through which they will work with the course’s instructors, Profs. Matt Frierdich and Merve Fejzula, to develop an independent research project that emerges from their experience abroad.

Studying in Cape Town

Students will travel to Cape Town shortly after the new year, spending ten days living in residences near University of the Western Cape, attending lectures with scholars of the South African nation, and exploring the rich history and culture they’re immersed in. In addition to their time in the classroom, students will tour:

The Slave Lodge Museum, housed in one of Cape Town’s oldest buildings

The Woodstock and Observatory neighborhoods, and District Six Museum

Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned

Cape Town’s Muslim Quarter

Cape Peninsula and Sea Island, where students will visit the penguins of Boulder Beach

Spring Course Description

The spring course that all students who participate in the study abroad trip take is about the nexus between race and politics in the history of South Africa, where race was the formal organizing principle of the state from 1948 and 1994. In studying the Apartheid era and its pre-history and reverberations, students will consider how scholars have understood this relationship between race and politics, the social and economic context in which race was deployed as an instrument of making difference and exercising power, how this was and is contested, and the legacies of racialized rule in democratic South Africa.

The course is a 4000-level, writing-intensive seminar cross-listed with Constitutional Democracy, History, and Black Studies. It can be taken for Honors credit and will conclude each year with a conference where students publicly present their research projects.

Applying to Study in South Africa

Applications for the South Africa study abroad trip run through the MU Office of International Programs, opening at the start of the fall semester, with a deadline in late September. All students accepted into the program will be invited to apply for need-based financial assistance to help offset the cost of travel to Cape Town.