What is African Literature?

3.0 credits · Undergraduate

What counts as African literature? This course examines the long and varied history of literature from the world’s largest continent, including early Afro-Arab poetry, oral epics of the Malian Empire, novels and plays of twentieth-century decolonization, and contemporary Afrofuturist film and fiction. We’ll also consider the place of narratives of enslavement and more recent diasporic texts. Along the way, we’ll discuss some of the big debates that have divided African writers: Must one write in English? Should African literature be political? Is all African literature necessarily "postcolonial”? Students will leave the course with an understanding of how African literature speaks to both the continent and the world in ways that can help us to understand our present. (ENGL-GLS, ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)