Description

PDFs and Videos – Complete Learn-at-Your-Own-Pace Bundle

Includes:

• 14 PDFs

• 15 full-length video lectures

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Course Description and Objectives

Foundations of Kmtyw Thought is designed to address a major gap in the epistemological formation of the typical MPhil/PhD student by centering the deep thought traditions of Kmtyw (Black people) across space and time. The course introduces learners to the core principles, modes, patterns, and historical trajectories of thought and knowledge production rooted in Kmt (the Land of Black People) and extending globally from antiquity to the present.

Throughout the course, students engage a wide range of fundamental Kmtyw concepts and intellectual traditions, providing a solid foundation for the development of contemporary indigenous Kmt(.y.w) theoretical and conceptual frameworks applicable to original research. Participants gain sustained exposure to rich, interdisciplinary primary sources—including astronomy, medicine, philosophy, cosmology, language, art, and ritual systems—and to the writings of classical and contemporary Kmtyw thinkers.

The course further equips students with evaluative criteria and organizing principles necessary for conducting rigorous, independent, and innovative research grounded in Kmtyw intellectual traditions.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students will have:

• Acquired a grounded understanding of the cosmological foundations underlying classical and contemporary Kmtyw thought and philosophy

• Developed analytical tools for identifying shared worldview elements among Kmtyw across space and time

• Gained exposure to the manifestations of core Kmtyw worldview principles throughout the continent and the diaspora

• Become familiar with innovative methodologies for studying Kmtyw thought and applying them to research in sbAywt nt Kmtyw (studies of Black people)

Note: Main and supplementary texts are not included with this product.

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Main Texts

Kamalu, C. (1998). Person, Divinity and Nature. London: Karnak House.
Carruthers, J. H. (1999). Intellectual Warfare. Chicago: Third World Press.
Ephirim-Donkor, A. (2011). African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors. University Press of America.
Fu-Kiau, K. K. B. (1991). Self-Healing Power and Therapy. Black Classic Press.
Fu-Kiau, K. K. B. (1994). Ntangu-Tandu-Kolo: The Bantu-Kongo Concept of Time. In Time in the Black Experience.
Griaule, M. (1970). Conversations with Ogotemmeli. Oxford University Press.
Obenga, T. (2004). Kmt(.y.w) Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period, 2780–330 B.C. Per Ankh.

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Supplementary Texts

(Subject to augmentation as texts become available)

[Text list preserved verbatim for scholarly completeness; terminology retained as cited in original publications.]

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Course Outline

Understanding Kmt(.y.w) Thought

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Week 1: Origins of Kmt(.y.w) Philosophy

• What is Kmt(.y.w) Thought?

• What is the Kmt(.y.w) Worldview?

• Worldview as the foundation of thought

• Methods of research and the primacy of primary sources

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Concepts of the Person: Rites of Passage

• Birth

• Initiation

• Marriage

• Eldership

• Ancestors

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Week 2: Concepts of the Person — The Person as Multiple Selves

• Multiple selves

• Destiny / spiritual double

• Soul / breath

• Heart

• Ancestral guardian

• Shadow

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Week 3: Number, Destiny, and Divination

• The diviner and divinatory process

• Divination and traditional medicine

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Week 4: Complementary Opposites in Ethics and Morals

• Good and evil

• Freedom, destiny, and moral responsibility

• Truth, order, stability

• Chaos and uncertainty in myth

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Week 5: Divinity and Nature — Accounts of the Beginning

• Kmt

• Bambara

• Yoruba

• Kuba

• Dogon

• Fon

• Igbo

• Songye

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Week 6: Common Elements in Kmtyw Cosmology

• Primeval waters and life-force

• Transmission of vital energy

• Primordial elements / ancestors

• Chaos and order

• Divine intelligence / word

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Week 7: Supreme Being, Divinities, and Spirit-Forces

• Supreme being

• Divinities and spirit-forces

• Human–divine relationships

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Week 8: Earth and Land in Kmtyw Thought and Practice

• Land custodianship

• Agricultural cycles and ritual

• Human–environment interrelation

• Earth-based spiritual, political, and economic systems

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Week 9: Validity of Kmtyw Philosophy

• Classical and contemporary debates

• Internal criteria of philosophical legitimacy

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Week 10: Animism as a Modern Belief System

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Week 11: Kmtyw Thought in Combat and Military Science

• Continental and diasporic traditions

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Week 12: Philosophy of Kmtyw Art

• Aesthetics

• Symbolism and writing systems

• Art, power, and ideology

• Critique of “primitivism” and “fetishism”

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Week 13: Kmtyw Thought and the Thought of Non-Kmtyw

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Week 14: The Battle for Kmtyw Philosophy

• Intellectual warfare

• Knowledge, power, and liberation