Lagos: From the Pepperfarm to the Megaci

Lagos: The City Is…

• the unofficial capital of Nigeria
• the go-slow capital of the world
• Rem Koolhaas’ planning mystery
• George Packer’s mega-city nightmare

Above all, as social scientist Margaret Peil once said, Lagos: The city is the people. At last count, over 15 million people to be (in)exact which makes Lagos the second most densely populated city in Africa. How does a city like Lagos come into being? What are its origins?  What is its history in regional, continental, and global context?  How does it ‘work’ and what work does it do for our understandings of cities, urbanization, urbanism, colonialism, globalization, trans-nationalism, and the spatial factor in Africanist historical analyses?  This course examines the many Lagoses that have existed over time, in space, and in the imagination from the city’s origins to the 21st century.  This is a reading, writing, viewing, and listening intensive course.  We will be reading scholarly, policy-oriented, and popular sources on Lagos as well as screening films and audio recordings that feature Lagos in order to learn about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of this West African mega-city.