Sex, Pleasure and African Literature

Module overview

Contemporary African literature is about pleasure and beauty, as much as it is about the continent’s struggle for social justice and decolonisation. In the past two decades, African novels have won critical acclaim by telling stories about modern lives that challenge conventional understandings of gendered, embodied and sexual freedom. Such novels have expanded the global repertoire of literary forms and contributed to literary debates about modern selfhood and self-making. The module introduces you to 21st-century African texts in the forefront of these debates (and to their historical forebears), equips you with vocabularies for intersectional critical thought, and expands your ability to analyse form and genre.

Aims and Objectives

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

improved critical thinking skills, and
Improved essay writing skills;
improved attentive reading skills.

Knowledge and Understanding

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

familiarity with a body of African literary texts in English, the critical debates around them, and the conceptual vocabularies these debates entail; and
the ability to discuss issues related to gender, sexuality and embodiment in a culturally, theoretically and politically informed manner.
Knowledge and understanding of how to discuss Africa and Africans without othering them unintentionally;

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

an understanding of the relationship between form, genre and meaning in contemporary African texts in English.
Apprehension of the emancipatory political implications of a group of contemporary African texts in English;
an appreciation of the formal innovativeness of a group of contemporary African texts in English; and

Learning and Teaching

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods will include lectures, seminars, and workshops on research, using theory, working across disciplines, and writing process and practice. Learning methods will include debating, working in small groups, formulating questions as well as answers, writing in class as well as independently. This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible contact hour, 5 in total, 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.

Study time
Type	Hours
Seminar	11
Teaching	5
Lecture	11
Independent Study	123
Total study time	150

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Chinelo Okparanta (2015). Under the Udala Trees. London: Granta.

V. Y. Mudimbe (1988). The Invention of Africa. Oxford: James Currey.

Keguro Macharia (2019). Frottage. New York: New York University Press.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013). Americanah. London: Fourth Estate.

Akwaeke Emezi (2020). The Death of Vivek Oji. London: Faber.

Frederick Cooper (2014). Africa in the World: Capitalism, Empire, Nation-State. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Sylvia Tamale (2011). African Sexualities: A Reader. Oxford: Fahamu.

Sarah Ahmed (2006). Queer Phenomenology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Assessment

Summative

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

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Analytical essay	50%
Analytical essay	50%

Referral

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

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Analytical essay	50%
Analytical essay	50%

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.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Analytical essay	50%
Analytical essay	50%

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External