Muslim African Cosmopolitanism

This interdisciplinary course explores how literature and artistic expression in postcolonial Islamic Africa reflect the histories and politics of multicultural encounter. In addition to reading seminal texts on cosmopolitanism, this course engages students with Muslim African literature, cassette culture, popular music, and film in Muslim Africa. It explores critical issues of religious identity, education, gender, race, epistemology, and the sacred/secular divide in African Islamic contexts and from both an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan perspective.