ENGL 470

Fall 2018

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Modern African Fiction
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Credit: 3 OR 4 hours.

Same as AFST 410, CWL 410, and FR 410. See AFST 410.

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CRN Type Section Time Day Location Instructor Section Details
36665
Lecture
3G
10:00AM -10:50AM
MWF
150 English Building
Basu, M
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
08/27/18-12/12/18
Section Info:
Modern African fiction is the fiction of a continent that includes many nation-states, languages, and ethnicities. It is therefore by no means a homogenous entity, and in many ways our course attempts to express this very diversity through a reading of texts from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Egypt, South Africa, and Sudan. At the same time however, “Modern African Fiction” also endeavors to highlight the connections and links between representative writings from different regions of the continent. Indeed, the term modern calls for precisely such an inter-connected understanding. After all the regions we somewhat loosely group together as ‘modern Africa’ are also congruous in so far as they were almost all irredeemably transformed by the experience of colonialism. The term ‘modern’ has in fact since then come to be inextricably tied to the distinct twists and turns of the colonial encounter. To follow these twists and turns, we will not only read through a wide array of fictional material, but also through a range of critical essays that demonstrate how questions of colonialism, modernity, feminism, nationalism, and literature/culture converge upon one another. You will notice right away that we are not following a necessarily chronological approach in our reading of this literature, but rather one that allows us to foreground the above thematic connections. That is, summarizing the plot of the texts will not be the work of this class. Our texts will resist this kind of reading in favor of an investigation that asks how the mechanics and structures of language weave an intricate tapestry in which texts refer to each other, dialogue with each other and speak back to each other. At the end of this course, students should not only be familiar with symptomatic texts of African literature, but also should be able to read, write, and, think about these texts in an insightful manner, concentrating on developing abilities such as close-reading, comparative analysis, and argumentative logic. Finally, students should also be able to move outwards and to broaden the horizons of interpretation by allowing the close reading of an individual text to be informed by readings of social structures and political-cultural events.
36664
Lecture
U3
10:00AM -10:50AM
MWF
150 English Building
Basu, M
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
08/27/18-12/12/18
Section Info:
Modern African fiction is the fiction of a continent that includes many nation-states, languages, and ethnicities. It is therefore by no means a homogenous entity, and in many ways our course attempts to express this very diversity through a reading of texts from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Egypt, South Africa, and Sudan. At the same time however, “Modern African Fiction” also endeavors to highlight the connections and links between representative writings from different regions of the continent. Indeed, the term modern calls for precisely such an inter-connected understanding. After all the regions we somewhat loosely group together as ‘modern Africa’ are also congruous in so far as they were almost all irredeemably transformed by the experience of colonialism. The term ‘modern’ has in fact since then come to be inextricably tied to the distinct twists and turns of the colonial encounter. To follow these twists and turns, we will not only read through a wide array of fictional material, but also through a range of critical essays that demonstrate how questions of colonialism, modernity, feminism, nationalism, and literature/culture converge upon one another. You will notice right away that we are not following a necessarily chronological approach in our reading of this literature, but rather one that allows us to foreground the above thematic connections. That is, summarizing the plot of the texts will not be the work of this class. Our texts will resist this kind of reading in favor of an investigation that asks how the mechanics and structures of language weave an intricate tapestry in which texts refer to each other, dialogue with each other and speak back to each other. At the end of this course, students should not only be familiar with symptomatic texts of African literature, but also should be able to read, write, and, think about these texts in an insightful manner, concentrating on developing abilities such as close-reading, comparative analysis, and argumentative logic. Finally, students should also be able to move outwards and to broaden the horizons of interpretation by allowing the close reading of an individual text to be informed by readings of social structures and political-cultural events.
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