African 901: The African Novel

This course is a study of the form and aesthetics of the novel as it emerges in Africa. The novel is a European invention, but its life in Africa is singularly African, where “African” stands for a gravitational pull of geographical, political, and historical forces around which a set of forms, figures, methods, ideological investments, linguistic registers, etc. constellates. We will begin the course with indigenous African heroic epics and work our way through the 20th century, up until the speculative turn in the 20th century, all the while exploring various theoretical frameworks for studying the life of the novel in Africa. Working with a rich body of theoretical texts drawn from both African and European literary and philosophical traditions, we well theorize the contributions of African fiction to the understanding of space, the body, history, and technology as problems of storytelling.

Fiction

Mwindo Epic

Chaka by Thomas Mofolo

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Memoirs of the Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou

Kintu by Jeniffer Makumbi

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Theory

“Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe

The Rise of the African Novel by Mukoma wa Ngugi

Naturalizing Africa by Cajetan Iheka

Writing Spatialities in West Africa by Madhu Krishnan

Heterotopia by Michel Foucault