African 203: African Literature, Medicine, and Healing

This course examines how African literature and medicine are connected through the indices of the medical practitioner, the patient, and the general public. It focuses on the effect of mental illness and the constitution of self and its relationship to society; human dignity and social justice; the political uses of medical language, narratives, and diagnosis; and the relationship between African literature and medicine, especially in how they engage the idea of being human, the human body, and social justice. Students will explore contemporary works by writers such as Yusuf Dawood’s Eye of the Storm (2006), Emmanuel Omobowale’s The President’s Physician: An African Play (2004), and Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent  Kingdom (2021). They will also read canonical texts in which mental illness, medical language, and narratives foreground the text’s thematic concerns.