Module description
In this module, we will learn about an Ethiopian woman who waged war against European missionaries, about urban gossip in eighteenth and nineteenth century Mombasa, and about the advice Mwana Kupona gives young women about how to be good wives. We will read the story of how the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba took the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to Ethiopia; we will follow Ibn Battuta's dazzling travels in Sub-Saharan Africa; and despair with /Xam poet //Kabbo about the loss of his tobacco pouch to a hungry dog.
The module spans medieval and modern literary traditions from East Africa, West Africa, North Africa, South Africa and the Horn of Africa. The primary texts include epics, poems, travelogues, myths and folk narratives, philosophical dissertations, and historiography in languages such as Mandinka, Malagasy, Swahili, Ge'ez, Arabic, Latin, /Xam, and Xhosa.
Through these primary texts, we will explore topics such as:
- the role of Islam and Christianity in Africa’s literary transnationalism
- the politics of the conservation and preservation of Africa's manuscript heritage
- oral literature and the politics of folklore research
- feminist and queer criticism
- the Black presence in Europe in the medieval and modern period
- the role of European missionaries in the rise of African print cultures
- the legacy of European colonialism in relation to academic knowledge production in African studies
Assessment details
Educational aims & objectives
The course offers an overview of medieval and modern African texts from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century in relation to literary theory and contemporary politics.
Learning outcomes
By end of the module students will have:
- Gained new knowledge on African history from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century
- Questioned the classification of African literature based on a "precolonial", "colonial", and "postcolonial" period
- Traced the cultural, literary and intellectual networks connecting Africa with Europe, Asia and the Middle East, thus questioning the notion of Africa as static and isolated before European colonial conquests
- Reflected on the definition of African literature in relation to histories of slavery and diaspora
- Problematised the notion of "genres" and the very same idea of "literature", most notably with reference to orature
- Developed critical skills to historicise literary methodologies and make them account for cross-cultural differences
- Developed interdisciplinary skills to analyse literature in conjunction with music and material culture
- Gained awareness of the power dynamics embedded in the collection, conservation and interpretation of African medieval and modern texts
Teaching pattern
1 hour lecture and 1 hour seminar, weekly
Suggested reading list
- David C. Conrad and Djanka Tassey Condé, Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples (2004)
- Ousmane Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (2016)
- Said Hamdun and Noel King, Ibn Battuta in Black Africa (2005)
- E. A. Wallis Budge, The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek (1922)
- JD Lewis-Williams, Stories That Float from Afar: Ancestral Folklore of the San of Southern Africa (2000)
- Wendy Belcher, The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman (2015).
- Mohamed H. Abdulaziz, Muyaka: 19th Century Swahili Popular Poetry (1979)
- Jeff Opland (editor), William Wellington Gqoba: Isizwe Esinembali (1873-1888) (2015).