Universität Wien

140064 VO Race, Gender and Sexuality in African Literature (2012W)

Details

Language: English

Examination dates

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

Tuesday 09.10. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 16.10. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 23.10. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 30.10. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 06.11. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 13.11. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 20.11. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 27.11. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 04.12. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 11.12. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 18.12. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 08.01. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 15.01. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 22.01. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03
Tuesday 29.01. 15:00 - 17:00 Inst. f. Afrikawissenschaften, Seminarraum 1 UniCampus Hof 5 2M-O1-03

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

This course will explore the many ways in which ‘race’ and ‘gender’ have come into being through each other and governed political identities and relationships in colonial and postcolonial Africa, as reflected in African anglophone literature of the last 100 years. ‘Race’ and ‘gender’ will be seen as interchangeable terms in the patriarchal enterprise of colonialism and the resistance against it, and as over-loaded concepts that continue to impact upon the understanding of what it means to be ‘African’. Topics to be discussed include the gendered imagination of imperial adventure novels; the marginalization of femininity by both colonial and African nationalist discourses; feminist rewritings of African nationalism; the sexualized perception of mixed-raced identities in southern Africa; the pathologization of gay sexuality across Africa; the identity of women in Islamic Africa; and the sexualization and commodification of the African female body in the West. Through the trope of dissident desire, the creolisation and hybridity of culture and identity in Africa will be analyzed in all of its meanings, both positive and negative. Desire will be explored as both a destructive force and a boundary-breaking energy that can redefine both the body and the nation through an imaginary encounter with otherness.

Assessment and permitted materials

Argumentative essay, 10-12 pages.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

identify, analyse and understand key theoretical and historical issues in the field of African literature
understand the operations of race and gender categories in African literature, history and philosophy
- analyse key African literary works in terms of their social and historical context
- apply close reading skills to a variety of literary texts
- reflect critically on the relations between primary texts and relevant secondary texts
- discriminate between ideas and define personal positions and justify them intellectually
- produce well-structured, relevant arguments with an appropriate intellectual framework

Examination topics

Lecture.

Reading list

Primary texts:
H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (1885)
Sarah Gertrude Millin, God’s Step-Children (1925)
William Plomer, Turbott Wolfe (1925)
Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing (1950)
Bessie Head, The Cardinals (1962)
Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger (1978)
Lewis Nkosi, Mating Birds (1986)
Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
Wilson Katiyo, A Son of the Soil (1976)
Yvonne Vera, Without a Name (1994)
K. Sello Duiker, The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001)
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1998)
Chika Unigwe, On Black Sisters’ Street (2009)

Secondary texts:
will be provided on weekly syllabus

Association in the course directory

SAL, (AL.1), EC-1
IE: T IV, VM4

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:34