This class focuses on a variety of representations of African migration. Although the focus of this class is literary representations, we will also look at a few films. To that end, we will examine to African migration as it intersects with broader thematic concerns. The courses will start with a broad notion of diaspora making by analyzing Yaa Gyasi Homegoing. From there, we will turn to Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease that centers on a protagonist schooled in Britain who returns to work as a colonial civil service officer to address colonial Nigeria while also examining Mono Beti’s Cruel City in relation to colonial Cameroon. Buchi Emecheta’s feminist Second Class Citizen and Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy will constitute the next section of the course. The literary movement of Afropolitanism makes up another section with Teju Cole’s Open City and Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go as representative expressions. Refugee livelihood will also be a topic at hand and Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears and All Our Names and Abdourahman A. Waberi’s speculative novel In the United States of Africa will be our guide. We will also discuss migration and environmentalism by looking at Ishmael Beah’s The Radiance of Tomorrow and In Koli Jean Bofane’s Congo, INC. Finally, we will look at representations of migration in life-writing. Abdi Nor Iftin’s Call Me American, Zakes Mda’s Sometimes there is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider. Other texts may include Fatou Diome’s The Belly of the Atlantic, NoViolet Bulawayo We Need New Names, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Wilfried N’Sondé The Heart of the Leopard Spots. Possible films include Mati Diop Atlantics, Ousmane Sembéne Dark Girl, Moussa Touré La Pirogue and more.
SLOs
- Develop critical skills for literary analysis
- Develop critical skills for the analysis of film
- Ability to ground texts historically
- Ability to ground texts intertextually
- Ability to apply theory to literary texts.
- Develop the ability to write a research essay about a text
- Read and engage secondary source material