Love and Death in Africa's Cities

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• understand key debates related to African city lives and city writings.
• construct original arguments related to the thinking and imagination of others;
• analyse fictional methods of constructing social space;
• compare contemporary urban texts and contexts; and

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:write confidently and clearly in response to complex texts and debates;
• develop reading strategies appropriate to Africa’s texts and genres.
• research unfamiliar texts and contexts;

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• the range and complexity of Africa’s city texts;
• the social contexts and historical backgrounds of the primary texts on the module;
• how notions of ‘Africa’ may be related to notions of ‘modernity’.
• a selection of African urban histories and the discursive formations they have generated, and

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• respond with understanding and tact to non-European cultural standpoints.
• engage in cross-cultural dialogue, and
• formulate reasoned arguments and opinions;
• deploy a clear and legible writing style;

The module will introduce you to a range of canonical and popular narrative texts and genres related to cities in all the regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Classroom discussions of how these literary and filmic texts frame and construct the concepts of love and death will be organised around five key areas of literary and theoretical debate, to do with space, modernity, nation, gender and resistance.

Teaching and learning methods

• Lectures
• Seminars involving group work, plenary debate, short written exercises and individual presentations
• Private study (including library research accessing and evaluating appropriate online resources)
• Guidance and feedback sessions on assignments
• Essay writing

This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible weekly contact hour, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour will include (but not be limited to) activities such as language, theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Mbembe, Achille (2001). On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press,.

Primorac, Ranka (ed) (2010). African City Textualities. London: Routledge.

Mtobwa, Ben (1971). Dar es Salaam by Night.

Paton, Alan (1948). Cry Beloved Country.

Robinson, Jenny (2006). Ordinary Cities. London: Routledge.

Soyinka, Wole (1972). The Interpreters.

wa Ngugi, Mukoma (2009). Nairobi Heat.

Banda-Aaku, Ellen (2011). Patchwork.

Abani, Chris (2004). Graceland.

Vera, Yvonne (1998). Butterfly Burning.

Nuttall, Sarah (2009). Entanglement. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

Mabanckou, Alain (2003). African Psycho.

Geschiere, Peter, et al (eds) (2008). Modernity in Africa. Oxford: James Currey.

Appiah, Anthony (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. London: Penguin.

Aidoo, Ama Ata (1991). Changes: A Love Story.

Lefebvre, Henry (1996). Writings on Cities. Oxford: Blackwell.

Barber, Karin (2007). The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, Charles (2004). Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.

Newell, Stephanie (ed) (2002). Readings in African Popular Fiction. Oxford: James Currey.

Mpe, Pashwane (2001). Welcome to our Hillbrow.

Assessment strategy

The first essay will ask you to write about a specific aspect of the narrative construction of space in a single novel on the module. The second essay will be on a topic asking you to compare two novels on the module.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External