AJ28072 Southern African Literature

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2014
Extent and Intensity
0/2/0. 2 credit(s) (plus 3 credits for an exam). Recommended Type of Completion: zk (examination). Other types of completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
Dr. Dobrota Pucherová, D. Phil. (lecturer), Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. (deputy)
Guaranteed by
Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.
Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Tomáš Hanzálek
Supplier department: Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
each even Thursday 14:10–15:45 M24
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 15 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/15, only registered: 0/15, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/15
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 10 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
This seminar will explore the many ways in which “race”, “gender” and “sexuality” have come into being through each other and governed political identities and relationships in colonial and postcolonial southern Africa, as reflected in its literature of the last 100 years. “Race”, “gender” and “sexuality” 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”. Cross-racial desire and sexuality will be analyzed in all of its cultural implications, both positive and negative: as a violent, destructive desire to dominate and possess the colonized, which has always involved the othering, exoticization and commodification of the African body and the accompanying pathologization of mixed-raced people; as well as a boundary-breaking energy that can redefine both the body and the nation through an imaginary encounter with otherness, leading to positively-charged understanding of creolization and hybridity. The primary texts will be complemented by secondary readings. Students will be expected to read the assigned texts, contribute to seminar discussions, write four two-page response papers and a final essay, incorporating key theoretical concepts and critical analyses into their work. At the end of the course, students should be able to identify, analyse and understand the key debates on race, gender, sexuality and power in southern African literature and apply this knowledge to the analysis of a variety of literary texts.
Syllabus
  • Week 2 Introduction: imperial desire (Oct. 2) Week 4 Scientific racism and dissident desire in the colony (Oct. 16) Primary text: Sarah Gertrude Millin, God’s Step-Children (1924) Secondary texts: J.M. Coetzee, “Blood, Flaw, Taint, Degeneration: the Case of Sarah Gertrude Millin,” White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa, Yale U Press, 1988, pp. 136-162. Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Chapter 6. First response paper due Week 6 Colonial paranoia (Oct. 30) Primary text: Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing (1950) Secondary texts: Frantz Fanon, “The Man of Colour and the White Woman,” Black Skin, White Masks, London, Pluto Press, 1968. Abdul R. JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature”, Critical Inquiry, 12.1 (Autumn 1985): 59-87. Second response paper due Week 8 Mixed-raced identity in apartheid South Africa (Nov. 13) Primary text: Bessie Head, The Cardinals (1962) Secondary texts: Bessie Head, “Notes From a Quiet Backwater”, in A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings. London: Heinemann, 1990. Zoë Wicomb, “Shame and Identity: the Case of the Coloured in South Africa”, in Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid and Democracy, 1970-1995, ed. Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly. Cambridge UP, 1998. Third response paper due Week 8 Cross-racial sexuality in colonial Rhodesia (Nov. 27) Primary text: Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger (1978) Secondary texts: Frantz Fanon, “The Man of Colour and the White Woman,” Black Skin, White Masks, London, Pluto Press, 1968. “Dambudzo Marechera interviews himself.” In Dambudzo Marechera: A Source Book on his Life and Work, ed. Flora Veit-Wild (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990). Flora Veit-Wild, “Words as Bullets”, Zambezia (1987), XIV . Third response paper due Week 12 Race, gender and sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa (Dec. 11) Primary text: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1998) Secondary texts: Frantz Fanon, “The White Man and the Woman of Colour,” Black Skin, White Masks. Peter McDonald, “Disgrace Effects,” Interventions, 4. 3 (2002), pp. 321-330. Elleke Boehmer, “Not Saying Sorry, Not Speaking Pain: Gender Implications in Disgrace,” Interventions, 4.3 (2002): 342-351. Course evaluation and conclusion
Literature
  • Bessie Head, The Cardinals (1962)
  • Frantz Fanon, “The White Man and the Woman of Colour,” Black Skin, White Masks, London, Pluto Press, 1968.
  • Bessie Head, “Notes From a Quiet Backwater”, in A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings. London: Heinemann, 1990.
  • Elleke Boehmer, “Not Saying Sorry, Not Speaking Pain: Gender Implications in Disgrace,”
  • Abdul R. JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature”, Critical Inquiry, 12. 1 (Autumn 1985): 59-87.
  • Zoë Wicomb, “Shame and Identity: the Case of the Coloured in South Africa”, in Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid and Democracy, 1970-1995, ed. Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly. Cambridge UP, 1998.
  • Frantz Fanon, “The Man of Colour and the White Woman,” Black Skin, White Masks, London, Pluto Press, 1968.
  • Sarah Gertrude Millin, God’s Step-Children (1924)
  • Peter McDonald, “Disgrace Effects,” Interventions, vol. 4, no. 3 (2002), pp. 321-330.
  • Ashcroft et al., “Colonialism and Silence: Lewis Nkosi’s Mating Birds,” The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge, 1989, pp. 82-86.
  • J.M. Coetzee, “Blood, Flaw, Taint, Degeneration: the Case of Sarah Gertrude Millin,” White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa, Yale University Press, 1988.
  • Fishburn, Katherine. “The Manichean Allegories of Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing”, Research in African Literatures. 25.4 (1994): 1-15.
  • Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing (1950)
  • Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Chapters 6 and 7.
  • J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1998)
  • Lewis Nkosi, Mating Birds (1986)
Teaching methods
Seminar. No absence allowed.
Assessment methods
Participation and homework (40%), argumentative essay, 10-12 pages (60%). No absence allowed.
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught once in two years.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2015.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2014, recent)
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