Module description
This module looks at world literature from the vantage point of African texts and genres. African societies have a long and rich history of cultural interactions with Europe, Asia, and the Americas, stretching all the way back to the medieval period. Focusing on case studies from different linguistic traditions and geographical areas across the African continent, this module documents the presence and literary impact of non-Africans in Africa, as well as Africans in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. We will read texts that shed light on African conceptualisations of the “global” and illustrate Africa’s central role in the making of the modern world.
Assessment details
100% one learning journal with ten entries, one per week, to be submitted as an end-semester assignment.
Educational aims & objectives
The module teaches students about the history, culture and literary traditions of the African continent, their relationship with other literary traditions worldwide, and the contribution of African texts and genres to world literature theories and debates.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students will gain the necessary historical and cultural knowledge to contextualise African texts and genres and to trace the cultural, literary and intellectual networks connecting Africa with Europe, Asia and the Americas. Students will be able to evaluate how African texts and genres extend, complicate, or challenge the ideas and framework that have been developed in the field of world literature. Finally, students will develop important critical and comparative skills to historicise literary methodologies and make them account for cross-cultural differences.
Teaching pattern
Weekly two-hour seminar
Suggested reading list
We will read a selection of precolonial African texts originally composed in languages such as Ge’ez, Amharic, Swahili, Latin, Arabic, Wolof and representing a wide variety of genres, such as philosophical autobiographies, hagiographies, satirical poetry, travelogues, and epics.