Lecturer in charge: Professor Carolyn Cooper [Room 37 – New Arts Block]

Beginning with the analysis of one Southern African and one West African novel, the course defines indigenous African feminist perspectives from which to compare the diasporic African-American and Caribbean texts. The authors' use of narrative conventions and modes such as autobiography, the bildungsroman , the romance, the quest/journey motif, dreams, visions and awakenings suggests a tradition of female discourses that cross lines of race, class, ethnicity and gender. These female-authored African/Diasporic narratives employ “mainstream” canonical literary techniques while simultaneously sharing discursive strategies with other feminist texts that contest the hegemony of the phallocentric, literary canon. Techniques of oracy, for example, constitute an alternate, privileged discourse for these African/Diasporic women writers.

Prerequisite: E10B

Instruction: Two lectures, one tutorial per week

Evaluation: One 2500-word typewritten essay 20%

Two tutorial presentations 20%

Final 2-hour examination (2 answers) 60%

Prescribed Texts:

Aidoo, Ama Ata. Changes (Feminist Press pb)
Brodber, Erna. Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (New Beacon pb)
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions (Women's Press pb)
Kincaid , Jamaica . Lucy (Farrar, Straus, Giroux pb)
Marshall, Paule. Praisesong for the Widow ( Penguin , USA pb)
Morrison, Toni. Tar Baby (Penguin pb)