Special Topics in English Literature: Modern and Contemporary
ENGLISH 290S-3
Major African Writers
Chris Ouma
Mondays and Wednesdays
10:05 - 11:20 am
How does one talk about African literature? What is African literature? African literature is constituted as a canon by cohorts of what can be considered 'major writers'. Here we mean not just novelists, we are also taking about playwrights and poets from all corners of the continent. In this course, we will be engaging with a Pan-African diet of African writers in English, including those whose works have been translated into English from French, Portuguese and African languages. From the timeless 'Epic of Sundiata' in Mali, across the earliest novels by Thomas Mofolo (Lesotho) to the advent of modern African literature in the age of Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana), Mariama Ba (Senegal), Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt), and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (Kenya), the course will move across a couple of centuries towards our present moment: the age of Chimamanda Adichie and her contemporaries. We will watch films, we will listen to music. We will move like an epic - across the ages, through text, sound and image - with a feast of African imagination. There will be four single page reflective essays, a 4-6 page mid term essay and 6-9 page final essay.
A major author, topic, or theme of modern and contemporary literature. Satisfies Area III for the English major. Topics vary each semester. See synopsis for more details.
