African Literatures and Cultures (362-0-20)

Instructors

Nasrin Qader
847/491-8263
1860 S. Campus Drive, Crowe Hall #2-129
Office Hours: Thursdays 1:30-3:30 or by appointment

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-435: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

In 2007, the great Senegalese singer, composer, songwriter Youssou N'Dour undertook a "musical odyssey" to bring a concert to the Gorée Island-Senegal. The journey begins in Georgia, USA, with the story of jazz. The title of the film, "Retour à Gorée," evokes "the door of no return," all the doors along the coast of West Africa from which slaves were embarked on ships for Europe and the Americas, never to return. The most famous of these many doors is on Gorée, a slaving post since the 15th century. We will begin, this course with this musical homage to the memory of slaves and the legacies of slavery and then turn to works of fiction where the stories of slaves are not only kept alive but also brought to the forefront of our collective consciousness not only of the past but also of the present. These stories focus our attention on the singular, the forgotten, or the erased from the broader history, including that of slavery itself.

We will study only selected works from the vast corpus on this question by African and Caribbean writers and thinkers. Despite time restraint, we will nevertheless pluralize our frame of reference to account for how this history has imbricated different times and places as well as the diversities of approaches to it. We will close the course with a film suggesting that dynamics that fed the violence of slavery are not merely in the past, but insinuate themselves in global economic and social inequities fueled by continued exploitation and extractivism that send people into the dangerous waters of the Atlantic, become emblematic of the risk and violence of forced displacement generally.

Close analyses of these novels and films together with theoretical and critical works will enable students to reflect on literature and cinema's critical role in foregrounding the present's entanglement with the past in general, a question at the heart of this course.

Registration Requirements

Completion of two courses from the series French 271-273 or permission of instructor

Learning Objectives

● Observe the forms, genres, and styles of literary and cinematic expression through practices of close reading and analysis.
● Gain awareness of the philosophical, cultural, and historical factors influencing literary and cinematic inscriptions of the core question of the course.
● Enhance their spoken and written skills in literary and cinematic interpretation, analysis, and commentary.
● Sharpen powers of interpretation, critique, and aesthetic perception.
● Enlarge conceptual vocabulary to understand and express abstract notions
● Think critically about their own relations to structures of power and privilege, to vulnerability and agency, and to structures of knowledge.

Evaluation Method

Attendance, participation, preparation: (10%)
Weekly posting (every Tuesday by 9 am): (10%)
In class writing exercises: (10%)
Midterm paper (20 %)
Presentation (10-12minutes): 15%
Peer review of final paper (10%)
Final essay: 25%

Class Materials (Required)

Pierre-Yves Borgeaud Retour à Gorée (documentary film, Canvas streaming)
David Diop La porte du voyage sans retour (Senegal, novel) ISBN 9782757896495
Mati Diop Atlantique (Senegal/France, film, Netflix)
Leonora Miano La Saison de l'ombre (Cameroon, novel) (ISBN 9782246801139)
Fabienne Kanor Humus (Martinique/US, novel, ‎ (ISBN 978-2070780853

Class Materials (Suggested)

Lionel Skeketee, Patric Eboué, Thomas N'Gijol, Case départ (film 2011)
Jean-Claude Barny, Tropiques Amers, 2007) (French miniseries on history of slavery in the Caribbean)
Fabienne Kanor, Louisiane (novel, 2022)
Abdellatif Kechiche Vénus noire (film, 2010)
Maryse Condé, Moi, Tituba (novel, 1986)
Patrick Chamoiseau L'esclave vieil homme et le molosse (novel, 1997)
Évelyne Trouillot's Rosalie l'infâme, (novel, 2003)
Mousa Ould Ebnou Barzakh (novel, 1994)

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Reserved for French Majors & Minors. Prerequisite: Students must have completed FRENCH 271-0, FRENCH 272-0, or FRENCH 273-0. Other students may register with instructor permission.