Ways of Knowing in Southern African Literature

This course surveys twenty and twenty-first century Southern African literature, with a focus on African epistemologies (ways of knowing). How have Southern Africans thought about human beings, the city, the divine, and nature? How do they conceptualize Black African futures? How do these literatures reflect indigenous theories of the world? Students will close read these epics, novels, and a few poems (some in translation from African languages) and develop their skills in exegesis and use of critical methodologies, such as postcolonial criticism, African feminism, and ecocriticism.