Transition(s)

AFRAMER 112X Subject & Catalog Number

Description

In this introductory course, we examine and question the sameness often ascribed to African literature as a sociological and anthropological archive. We will explore stories of mobility, movement, and exchange, drawing from the archives of Transition, a magazine founded in 1961 in Kampala, Uganda, and now housed at Harvard. Transition fostered some of the most engaging intellectual debates of its time, introducing a critical idiom that shaped a generation's postcolonial and postnational critiques. Many of its contributors were young, ambitious thinkers who used the magazine to express and refine their ideas (e.g., Bessie Head, Ngugi waThiong'o, Wole Soyinka). Through Transition, and with the understanding that 'the archive is a very important place to go' (Simon Gikandi), students will learn to engage with primary sources, critically analyze historical and literary materials, and examine the evolution of African literature. The course emphasizes close reading, archival research, and contextual analysis, equipping students with the tools to understand how African literature has been formed and how it continues to evolve. By exploring the transitions, transformations, and translocations in African literature, we will experience genre formation and establish key foundations: Where did African literature come from? How, when, and why did the idea of literature in the modern sense emerge in Africa? What is the utility of a term like 'African literature' and the idea of a field of African literary studies