L779 25357 CRAWFORD (#5)
Literature & Society

11:15p – 2:15p R

TOPIC:  AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN DIALOGUES, POST-1960

A letter written, in 1891, by A.G. Belton to the American
Colonization Society encapsulates the significance of “Africa” as a
concrete place and a metaphor without brakes in the African American
imagination. Belton writes, “We as a people are oppressed and
disenfranchised. [. . .] We as a people believe that Africa is the
place but to get from under bondage we are thinking of Oklahoma as
this is our nearest place of safety.”  Africa, in the African
American imagination, often signifies a prelapsarian state of
wholeness, the mythical homeland often tied to images of Africa as
one country, not a huge continent. This seminar will focus on a
series of migrations that define African and African American
culture and literature. In addition to literature written after
actual travel to Africa (such as Richard Wright’s 1954 narrative,
Black Power, written after his journey to Ghana), we will consider
particular forms of black nationalism that make “Africa” an
abstraction that African Americans attempt to embody. The literature
that emerged after independence movements in Africa begs to be
compared to the African American literature that emerged during and
after the Black Power Movement.
	
We will focus on the conscious and unconscious dialogues between
African American and Black African literature as well as profound
differences. The seminar will also introduce you to some of the most
nuanced theoretical work on the black diaspora. Glissant's Poetics
of Relation will be a prime theoretical frame. Brent Edward's work
on the "practice of diaspora" as translation will also be a part of
our theoretical foundation.
We will begin with a pairing of Flash of the Spirit (a poignant
analysis of the incredibly elusive but undeniable African retentions
throughout the diaspora) and Native Stranger: A Black American's
Journey into the Heart of Africa (a much less celebratory approach
to the role of Africa in the black diasporic imagination).

The comparisons of novels may include the women-oriented epistolary
shape of The Color Purple and So Long a Letter (Mariama Ba), A
Question of Power (Bessie Head) and The Temple of My Familiar (which
explicitly invokes Bessie Head), Nervous Conditions (Tsitsi
Dangarembga) and The Salteaters (Toni Cade Bambara), The House of
Hunger (Dambudzo Marechera) and Reuben (John Edgar Wideman), Our
Sister Killjoy (Ama Ata Aidoo) and The Cattle Killers (John Edgar
Wideman).

The fields of comparative ethnic studies and black diaspora theory
have now gained real momentum. This seminar will provide a solid
foundation for work in these fields and new ways of conceptualizing
African American literature. Throughout the semester, students will
concentrate on their final journal-length essay (20 pages).  Each
student will write a few reading responses (two pages) that will be
emailed to the entire seminar and used as a springboard for
discussion.