Moodle

The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English (2008), Oyekan Owomoyela explains the gender imbalance of his approach as follows: “male writers predominate in the Guide because in real life they do in fact predominate in literary production” (1). This claim can be easily challenged by pointing to contemporary female authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, or Taiye Selasi, who are at the forefront of West Africa’s thriving literature today. Female writers, among them Flora Nwapa and Ama Atta Aidoo, also shaped the beginnings of West Africa’s Anglophone writing traditions. In this seminar course, we will read four novels by female West African writers from Ghana and Nigeria, two countries with an especially powerful literary heritage and a fascinating contemporary writing scene. Acknowledging the diversity and complexity each author’s work, we will explore shared motifs and concerns which connect these texts from different periods and contexts. Questions which will concern us throughout the semester are: the politics of the family, the rise of urban middle classes in postcolonial societies, the tension between modernity and tradition.     

Students are advised to buy the following editions:

Atta, Sefi. Everything Good Will Come. Adlestrop, Arris: 2005.

Aidoo, Ama Ata. Changes. A Love Story. Oxford, Heinemann: 1991.

Darko, Amma. The Housemaid. Oxford, Heinemann: 1998.

Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. New York, Braziller: 1979.

Additional material will be made available via moodle or, upon request, email.

PS NamLitCult and PS TAS: Southern Africa's Literary Urbanities: Fiction from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia
Wed, 16-18
C 5 3, room U13

With the arrival of the bus
the city was brought to the village
and we began to yearn for the place behind the horizons.
(Musaemura Zimunya: Country Dawns and City Lights, p 31)

In this seminar course, we will explore the ways in which Southern African authors from different periods and backgrounds engage with urban space. We will read our way from the early twentieth century to the present day, from colonial depictions of emerging industrial urbanities in Douglas Blackburn’s Leaven (1908) to the conflict between rural tradition and urban modernity captured in the classic “Jim Comes to Joburg” stories, to the South African postapartheid city novel and contemporary urban crime fiction from Zambia. We will conclude with a novel which transports the Zimbabwean capital to Europe: Harare North (2015) by Brian Chikwava.
This course aims at developing an understanding of selected textual traditions important to the Southern African region. Acknowledging the vast diversity and complexity of this subregion, we will shed light on shared literary traditions, enduring narratives, and motifs which have shaped Southern Africa’s rich literary heritage.  In our discussions, we will also encounter selected aspects of the recent 'world literature debate' and discuss the potentials and limits of taking a regional perspective.  Furthermore, we will develop a critical understanding of the primary texts’ engagement with the political contexts and ideological of their time.

Students are advised to buy the following editions:
Blackburn, Douglas. Leaven. A Black and White Story. 1908. Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1991. 
Chikwava, Brian. Harare North. London: Jonathan Cape, 2009.
Bush, Tanvi. Witch Girl. Lusaka: Modjaji Books, 2015.
Mpe, Phaswane. Welcome to our Hillbrow: A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2011.

Further material, including poems from Musaemura Zimunya’s poetry collection Country Dawns and City Lights (which has unfortunately gone out of print) and the short story "Rhodesia Road" by Alfred Mbeba, will be provided in a digital format or, upon request, in the form of a reader.