ENGL 269
Introduction to African Literature: Witness Literature Fall 2013
Division I
Cross-listed AFR 205
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

After the television images, the photographs and the news stories, come the writers. In the words of Nobel prize-winning South African writer Nadine Gordimer, it is the role and duty of the writer “to bear inward witness,” for the power to transform traumatic events through literature is the “awesome responsibility of their endowment with the seventh sense of the imagination.” ‘Witness literature’ is an emerging canon, the concept of which can be applied to much African literature of the past fifty years, including the work of Aminatta Forna, novelist and memoirist who will lead this course. From this perspective we’ll study novels, novellas and short stories and examine how a range of writers portray political events through their writing, work to extract meaning from violence, convey the ways of resistance and demonstrate the power of memory. We will read the work of Ngugi wa Thiongo, Ahmadou Kourouma and Chinua Achebe, as well as those of the continent’s new voices: Helon Habila, Brian Chikwava, Petina Gappah and Uwem Akpan.
The Class: Format: discussion/seminar
Limit: 30
Expected: 20
Class#: 1107
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active class participation and two/three papers totaling about 20-25 pages
Prerequisites: none; this is an introductory course, so no prior knowledge of African literature is necessary
Enrollment Preferences: first-year students, sophomores, English majors and Africana Studies concentrators
Distributions: Division I
Notes: meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under AFR; meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under ENGL
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
AFR 205 Division II ENGL 269 Division I

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