CMLT-C 261: Introduction to African Literatures
A. Adesokan ~ MW 9:30-10:45
~satisfies Cultural Studies and A&H requirements~

This course is designed to introduce students to primary,
foundational texts of African literatures, traditional as well as
contemporary, in such genres as the novel, poetry, autobiography,
drama, and cinema. While looking at the broad historical conditions
of African literatures and cultures, including educational and
bureaucratic influences, students will also engage with thematic
issues of pre-colonial encounters and exchanges, colonialism and
decolonization movements, anti-apartheid politics, gender
imbalances, and the disenchantment with the postcolonial state. In
this multi-genre, multi-period course, we will look at the
traditional forms generally grouped under oral literature from
different regions of the continent, and how the continent’s
experience of European languages has both shaped and been shaped by
the literatures. There will also be a handful of critical writings
and manifestoes about African politics and culture, especially at
the crucial periods of decolonization (early 1950s) and its nadir in
the late 1970s. Some of these will be used first to frame the entire
course, and others as critical introductions to each thematic and/or
regional issue developed in specific texts.
	
Course requirements include a two-page written response to each
primary text, one 5-6pp paper, and final exams. This final paper
will draw on a comparative method to explore in some depth one
thematic element in two generic texts. Readings may include:
Agostinho Neto: “On Literature and National Culture”; Second
Congress of Negro Writers and Artists, 1959: “Resolution on
Literature”; Ngugi et al.: “On the Abolition of English
Departments”; Dambudzo Marechera: “Escape from the House of Hunger”;
Achebe: Arrow of God; Armah: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born;
Atta: Everything Good Will Come; Ba: So Long a Letter; Fugard: Sizwe
Bansi is Dead; Gabre-Medhin: A Collision of Altars; Gordimer: July’s
People; Laye: Radiance of the King; Mphahlele: Afrika My Music;
Saadawi: Woman at Point-Zero; Soyinka: The Lion and the Jewel; Moore
& Beier: The Penguine Book of Modern African Poetry; Excerpts from:
The Fortunes of Wangrin, Ozidi Saga, Chaka. Films: Sembene: Mandabi;
Ansah: Heritage…Africa!; Dangarembga: Everyone’s Child.