Course Syllabus

Seminar 1. Introduction (MH) 

3 September

‘The Future of Literary Thinking’, Textual Practice, vol. 30, no. 7 (2016): 1149-1185.

Seminar 2. Periodization (MH)    

9 September

Eric Hayot, ‘Against Periodization, or, on Institutional Time’, New Literary History 42, no. 4 (Autumn 2011): 739-756.

Rita Felski, ‘Context Stinks!’, New Literary History 42, no. 4 (Autumn 2011): 573-591.

Martin Jay, ‘Historical Explanation and the Event: Reflections on the Limits of Contextualization’, New Literary History 42, no. 4 (Autumn 2011): 557-571.

Alice Bell and Marie-Laure Ryan, Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary [NOTE: e-book available through library]

Narratology(University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Introduction; Ch 2; Ch 5; Ch 9.

David Herman, ‘Cognitive Narratology’, in The living handbook of narratology  (online source)

David Herman, ‘How Stories Make Us Smarter: Narrative Theory and Cognitive Semiotics’, Reserches en Communication19 (2003): 1-22.

Alan Palmer, ‘The Construction of Fictional Minds’, Narrative10 (2002): 28-46.

Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg. ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’, in The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Seigworth and Gregg (Duke University Press), 1-25.

Brian Massumi, ‘The Autonomy of Affect’, Cultural Critique 31(1995): 83-109.

Brian Massumi, ‘Navigating Movements’, interview with Mary Zournazi, in Politics of Affect (Polity, 2015), 1-46.

Michelle Duffy and Paul Atkinsson, ‘Unnatural Movements: Modernism’s Shaping of Intimate Relations in Stravinsky’s Le Sacre Du Printemps’, Affirmations: of the Modern 1 (2014): 95-119.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Shame, Theatricality and Queer Performativity: Henry James’s The Art of the Novel’, in Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity(Duke University Press, 2003), 35-65.

Seminar 5. World Literature (MH)       

30 September

J.W. Goethe, ‘On World Literature’

Franco Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, New Left Review 1 (January-February 2000): 54-68.

Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. Malcolm DeBevoise (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007), Part I, Chapter 1 (‘Principles of a World History of Literature’).

David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003), Introduction, Ch. 7.

Pheng Cheah, ‘World Against Globe: Toward a Normative Conception of World Literature’, NLH45, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 303-329.

Warwick Research Collective, Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World Literature (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2015), Chapters 1-2.

Isabel Hofmeyr, ‘The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean: Forging New Paradigms of Transnationalism for the Global South – Literary and Cultural Perspectives’, Social Dynamics 32. 2 (2007): 3-32.

Maria Olaussen, ‘Archival Trajectories and Literary Voice in Indian Ocean Narratives of Slavery’, inInstitutions of World Literature: Writing, Translation, Markets, eds.Stefan Helgesson and Pieter Vermeulen (London: Routledge, 2016), 109-125.

Tina Steiner, ‘Writing “Wider Worlds”: The Role of Relation in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Fiction’, Research in African Literatures41.3 (2010): 124 – 135.

Seminar 7.       Afropolitanism (Maria Olaussen)                                           16 October

Chielozona Eze, ‘Rethinking African Culture and Identity: the Afropolitan model’,Journal of African Studies26:2 (2014): 234-247.

Emma Dabiri, ‘Why I’m Not an Afropolitan – Africa is a Country’, Africa is a Country 2014: 1.

Emma Dabiri, ‘Contemporary conversations: Afropolitanism: Reboot “Why I am (still) not an Afropolitan”’, Journal of African Cultural Studies28.1(2016): 104-108.

Susanne Gehrmann, ‘Cosmopolitanism with African Roots: Afropolitanism’s Ambivalent Mobilities’, Journal of African Cultural Studies 28.1(2016): 61-72.

Simon Gikandi, ‘On Afropolitanism’, foreword to Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folkore, eds. Jennifer Wawrzinek and J.K.S Makokha (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011).

Achille Mbembe, ‘Ways of Seeing: Beyond the New Nativism’, African Studies Review 44.2 (2001):1-14

Achille Mbembe, ‘African Modes of Self-Writing’, transl. Steven Rendall, Public Culture 14.1 (2002): 239-273.

Taye Selasi, ‘Bye-Bye Babar’, The Lip Magazine, 3 March 2005.

Please submit your abstract (100 words) of your chosen MA essay project the day before the seminar (5pm).The abstract should give a clear sense of your topic and your potential findings. Limit the abstract to 100 words; we will discuss them in great depth during the seminar.

Please submit your short paper (400 words) on the critical methodology and brief literature review of your chosen MA essay project the day before the seminar (5pm).The short paper should clearly spell out which critical theories you will be using, any methodological issues in your essay subject, and also briefly review the existing literature on your topic. For the literature review, you must have at least five secondary sources which you briefly detail (2 or 3 lines for each source; this part of the submission is not part of the 400-word limit for the assignment).

The final seminar will be structured as a mini-conference, with each presenter having ten minutes to lay out the MA essay project and to field questions about it.