African 202 (002): African Animation and Comics

This course explores themes in African studies, inviting students to interpret and contextualize African and Black visual cultural productions like animation and comics. It asks students to reflect on how animators and illustrators use the mediums to comment on culture, race, gender, disability, and politics. The course draws a line of continuity from African and Black oral storytelling traditions to the digitally mediated formats of drawn and illustrated storytelling. Historical storytellers like the griot draw on real and fantastic events and cultural resources to create tales, myths, and epics passed down across generations. Contemporary storytellers like animators and comic artists reterritorialize oral narratives and strategies and deploy imaging technologies to craft visual stories that explore historical and modern experiences, as well as visions for the future. Students will be able to answer the following questions: What are the connections between African oral traditions and contemporary visual narratives and what are the limits of this parallel? How are African and Black visual artists reappropriating elements of traditional cultures to produce trendy stories? In addition to exploring thematic issues of politics, history, and culture, how do these works reflect a distinctly African and Black aesthetic? Texts and case studies are drawn from the United States and different parts of the African continent, including South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria.