AFRC572 - SOUTH AFRICAN LIT & FILM

This course is concerned with the context, and an aspect of the content and form of African Literature. It is based on a selection of representative texts written in English, as well as a few texts in English translation. BLACK ATLANTIC/BLACK DIASPORA: Drawing upon three centuries of writings, this discussion-based graduate seminar tracts the development and circulation of black cultural expression and thought in a range of slave narriatives, spiritual autobiographies, novels, captivity narratives,speeches, poetry, plays and polemics from the late eighteenth to to the early twentieth centuries. We will critically investigate the analytic shift from "roots" to "routes" as we read widely in the literatures, histories and theories of what Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hal variously describe as the productive inter-culture of the black Atlantic world.