ENG 266 - Contemporary African & Caribbean Literature

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirements HU and DE.
What should a young woman do if she suspects her sister is a serial killer who is intentionally killing men across Nigeria? How do the struggles of the United States’ immigration process impact the relationship between a newlywed Haitian couple? The first question is the subject of one of the novels we will be reading in this course, and the second is the focus of one of the short stories we will discuss – and both texts are just two slivers of the wide variety of work we will read in this class. Throughout the semester, we will immerse ourselves in the rich literary traditions of multiple African and Caribbean nations as we explore novels, memoirs, short stories, and essays written by African and Caribbean authors from the late twentieth-century through today. While one course cannot rectify centuries of erasure, at the heart of this class is the desire to emphasize the immeasurable importance of the works on this syllabus and the multitude of other texts with which they are in conversation – and to push back against and unlearn the anti-Black, Eurocentric modes of thinking that have tried to depict this priceless literature as unimportant. As we read comedies, mysteries, current events pieces, literary scholarship, historical work, and more, we will treasure the gift that is African and Caribbean Literature, and we will embrace all that it can tell us about the African Diaspora, literature, global history, the contemporary world, and our way forward as human beings. Satisfies departmental Social Justice/BIPOC and Prose requirements.