What the Griot Said: Teaching Medieval West Africa

During the past month, I wrote six posts about medieval West Africa between 1000 and 1600 C.E. When I began this series, I discussed how I wanted to use the idea of “what would the griot say” as a way to center West African voices. The challenge with teaching medieval West Africa is that the local sources are relatively few compared to many more external sources. As a result, many textbooks focus on what outsiders thought about the people of the Mali and Songhay empires, rather than understanding how these people understood their world. In this post, I have brought together my six posts. I’m also including a collection of useful resources for finding materials and sources on medieval West Africa.

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