This is Comps, Pt. I

I'm currently sitting in the Libe at Carleton, struggling with my comps. I came back to Carleton for a few weeks primarily to work on these blasted comprehensive exercises. My progress has been balanced, but largely positive. I found a bunch of new sources online and in the libe that will come back with me to California. I'm still relying heavily upon Tareq Y. Ismael's "The U.A.R. In Africa" in all sections of the article; perhaps a bit too heavily. It's not a subject that's attracted a wide amount of attention in History circles--at least, not as much attention as it's gotten in political science journals and books. Considering I've never actually taken a political science course, sloughing through pages and pages of political analysis of the Africa policy has been less than enjoyable.

I have enjoyed looking at personal accounts from Africa relating to Nasser's political advances into Tanzania, Guinea, Ghana and Kenya. I hope that I can use some of these documents into the memory/identity section of the paper, which I hope will make it "historical" enough. I won't be attacking that part of the project until sometime during winter term, so I'm just filing away those sources for another day.

It may help for posterity's sake to remind readers what my comps is actually about. My comprehensive exercise will focus on the Africa Policy designed and enacted by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. While the overarching focus of my paper will be chronicling the rise and fall of the Africa Policy from 1956-1964, I will investigate Nasser’s use of history and propaganda to legitimize both his and Egypt’s place at the head of the Pan-African movement. Moreover, I will expand upon larger ideological movements that affected the scope and success of the policy, including anti-hegemony and nonalignment. I want to show that Nasser’s failure in properly creating dual leadership identities in the Middle East and Africa lead to the downfall of the Africa Policy, and cast the impression of the United Arab Republic as an extension of colonialism on the continent. A page turner, I know. I think it'll hold up throughout the term without having to go through multiple sweeping revisions. I wrote about a similar topic in Jamie's 395. So far, the sanity's holding.

In other news, I'm off to Annie's cabin tomorrow. But not before going to the Cow with Varsha tonight.