Module Code - Title:
EH4017
-
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
Year Last Offered:
2025/6
Hours Per Week:
Grading Type:
Prerequisite Modules:
Rationale and Purpose of the Module:
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to apply a critical and cogent awareness of
Contemporary literature from across the African continent
Multiple socio-political and cultural contexts associated with Anglophone African literatures
A sample of key theoretical debates in the field of African studies at large (connected to additional theoretical fields such as postcolonialism, human rights, feminism, ecocriticism, postmodernism, and so on)
A sample of key genres in African literature, include the memoir and autobiography, the novel, and drama
Ways to compare, contrast and combine different theoretical and methodological positions in the field of African Studies
Syllabus:
This module will examine the literary representation of violence by authors writing across the African continent today. Specifically, our analyses of selected works and writers will explore the following themes: 1. how attempts toward the national catharsis of post-genocide Rwanda and post-apartheid South Africa have been unsuccessful in ridding the two countries of cruelty and bloodshed; 2. how child soldiers come to terms with their violent and violated childhood while struggling to reinvent themselves in the midst of ruined societies; 3. how anti-colonial liberation warfare is remembered and informs contemporary identity struggles; and 4. how the memory of slavery informs the desire for rootedness and home. We will read novels, autobiographies, and hybrid texts, alongside watching films and reviewing key essays in the field of African literature.
Learning Outcomes:
Cognitive (Knowledge, Understanding, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis)
To recognize key literary texts and theoretical frameworks associated with different regions of the African continent.
To identify the historical contexts associated with literary texts under analysis that come from different African regions.
To analyze in depth several distinct literary themes in African literature.
To formulate critical responses to the literary debates in the fields of African Literature and African Studies at large.
Affective (Attitudes and Values)
To formulate critical responses to the literary debates in the fields of African Literature and African Studies at large.
To build conceptual and analytical bridges across African literary responses to the post-colonial world order, and other Western and post-colonial literatures.
Psychomotor (Physical Skills)
N/A
How the Module will be Taught and what will be the Learning Experiences of the Students:
Research Findings Incorporated in to the Syllabus (If Relevant):
Prime Texts:
Beah, I. (2008)
A Long Way Gone
, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Coetzee, J.M. (1999)
Disgrace
, New York: Vintage
Christiansë, Y (2007)
Unconfessed
, New York: Other Press
Farah, N. (2005)
Links
, New York: Penguin
Dangarembga, T. (1989)
Nervous Conditions
, New York: Vintage
Vera, Y (2000)
Butterfly Burning
, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hartman, S. (2007)
Lose Your Mother
, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Gurnah, A. (2002)
By The Sea
, London: Bloomsbury Publishing
Olaniyan, Tejumola & Ato Quayson, eds. (2007)
African Literature
, Oxford: Blackwell
Other Relevant Texts:
Cooper, B (1998)
Magical Realism in West African Fiction: Seeing With a Third Eye
, London : Routledge
Gilroy, P. (1993)
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lazarus, N (1990)
Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction
, New Haven: Yale University Press
Soyinka, W (1990)
Myth, Literature and the African World
, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Appiah, K. A. (1992)
In My Fathers House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture
, London: Methuen.
Programme(s) in which this Module is Offered:
Semester(s) Module is Offered:
Module Leader:
Yianna.Liatsos@ul.ie