Greece and Africa.

I found this syllabus online for a course taught at the University of Natal in South Africa called "Africa and the Classical Tradition". The class begins with an introduction to the Afrocentrist challenge presented by Martin Bernal's polemical broadside Black Athena, which despite its dubious linguistic theory about the Semitic origins of Ancient Greek words and proper names raises a host of serious questions about the implicit biases of classical studies that cannot be as easily dismissed. The representations of Africa by Greek and Roman authors are then studied at length, after which the class follows the thread of the classical tradition in Africa itself into the drama and poetry of South Africa and the West African nations, in particular the writings of Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka (whose reimagination of Euripides' play "The Bacchae" into an African context is pure inspiration). I wish I could take this course! The reading list alone is fantastic.

What I didn't realize when I stumbled upon this course description is that it was cross-posted by a site called Zenobia, which is a collection of "resources for teaching race and ethnicity in the classical world" maintained by the American Classical League, the professional adult counterpart to the Junior Classical League, of which I was a member and active participant back in high school - some would say too active a participant...