Teaching Africa in the Digital Age: Archives, AI, and Empathy
Free, Online (Zoom), Thursday February 19, 4:00 PM (Eastern)
Overview As educators work to decolonize syllabi and deepen students’ engagement with the African continent, how does the rise of A.I. impact the pedagogy of African studies and historical inquiry?
Join The Africa Network for a moderated discussion on the implications of AI for teaching and learning about Africa. We bring together Dr. Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine, an expert in African history and anti-racist pedagogy, and Sina Semnani, the technical lead behind History Genie.
We will explore how AI-assisted tools can help students decipher and analyze African historical archives—making primary sources more accessible than ever before. Crucially, we will place these tools in dialogue with Dr. Chapdelaine’s framework of “Black Joy” and empathetic teaching, discussing how to use technology not just to mine data, but to foster a deeper, more humanizing understanding of African history and its global connections.
Speakers
Dr. Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine is a historian with expertise in Women’s and Gender Studies, African history, and anti-racist pedagogy. She is the author of The Persistence of Slavery (2021) and co-editor of When Will the Joy Come? Black Women in the Ivory Tower (2023). Currently, she is developing Embrace Black Joy, a project focused on integrating anti-racist, joy-centered teaching practices into education.interfaces that allow scholars and students to critically engage with primary historical sources
Sina Semnani is a PhD student in the Stanford University Natural Language Processing Group and the technical lead of History Genie. His work focuses on improving the reliability of AI systems, building tools for handwriting recognition (OCR), and creating conversational interfaces that allow scholars and students to critically engage with primary historical sources.
Don’t miss this look at the future of African Studies education.
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Link for Zoom coordinates [Zoom Link].
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