| Reading Guide for Week 2 | |
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Originally from Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie came to the United States to complete her college education and then to pursue graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins University and Yale University. Her novels have won numerous literary prizes, and in 2008 she was awarded a so-called MacArthur Genius Grant. Like Hansen, Adichie too experienced an intense learning process, but in the opposite direction: as a non-American in America, rather than as an American abroad. Adichie had to learn about the peculiar racialized system in the United States, so different from how the status of people were understood in Nigeria. In her oft-viewed 2009 TED talk (over 25 million views!), Adichie extends from the question of race to consider the danger of ANY kind of “single story.” See Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story” (TEDGlobal July 2009) Born and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Seth Rockman now is a professor of American history at Brown University. In this excerpt from an introductory course lecture, he eloquently explains one of the fundamental missions of history as an academic discipline. |