Admission requirements
MA AS students and registered students from other MA programmes.
Description
This course explores African languages and literatures through an Africanist lens, focusing on their roles in nation building, national, regional or ethnic identity, self-governance, and (in)equality. It examines how language and literature shape worldviews, social belonging, power relations, and how (social) media can enable both inclusion and marginalization.
Africa, with over 2,100 languages, is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world. These languages are crucial for transmitting knowledge, culture, and history. Despite this, global literary studies have often prioritized English-language genres, overlooking the richness of African-language literatures—especially oral, vernacular, and manuscript traditions.
The course will enable you to explore how literature manifests in the digital era, including the rise of AI-generated content, and reconsider African literature by starting from local languages, scripts, and genres. We will challenge dominant narratives and highlight the importance of alternative African intellectual traditions and archives. We will also address the challenges African language speakers face due to language policies and ideologies.
Through reading, critical questions and analysis, you will explore how language and literature inform Pan-African debates and cultural expression and analyse their role in communication, resistance, and societal transformation. You will debate about issues of multilingualism, language vitality, and the social impact of linguistic diversity. You will assess the consequences of privileging certain languages in education, media, and public services as well as how 21st century new media have changed the circulation of knowledge, reshaping orality and literacy in Africa.
Course objectives
The aim of the course is to introduce students to theories and practices in language use, literature and social structure to reach an understanding of the role of language in constructing society. It will also address the ways speech communities shape their languages by using them in different ways. While multilingualism at both the individual and societal levels is the norm, African governments’ policies, e.g., on education and mass media, reflect monolingual mindset and the course is designed to help you reflect on and analyse the practical, political, economic and social questions that stem from the incongruence in language planning and policy and everyday practices of language use.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, you will gain a nuanced understanding of the role language and literature play in Africa's historical, cultural, and political spheres. More precisely, you will be able to:
1. analyse and explain how language and literature intersect with power, politics, and culture in African societies.
2. grasp the dynamics between local and global contexts in using language technologies such as writing that have impact on the composition, dissemination and memory of literary works and stories.
3. evaluate the vernacular language production of literary text and their circulation from within the continent.
4. formulate critical questions on a problem in the fields of African languages and literatures by taking into account social, cultural, academic variations also linked to the student’s own background.
5. debate on issues of language policy as it relates to various pillars of social development including education and health.
6. have an understanding of the complexity of linguistic vitality and diversity in Africa and the impact of technological advances on language diversity and literary culture.
7. acquire skills to identify linguistic means in various African languages that facilitate social interaction.
8. acquire skills to study African literature through existing database and use these tools in your own fieldwork.
9. develop and broaden skills of offering and receiving constructive feedback in occasional, broader research group seminars through the CRG African Language Archives (ALA).
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Lecture
Seminar
Research
Assessment method
Assessment
Take home assignment (relates to course objectives: 4, 5, 6)
Active Participation in class (relates to course objective 9)
Essay, paper (relates to course objectives: 1-3; 6-9)
Weighing
To complete the final mark, please take notice of the following:
Take home assignment 30%
Active participation in class 10%
Paper 60%
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher.
Resit
Resit to the course will be facilitated. Instructors will notify students who fail to attain 5.5 on what they need to do to fulfil the course requirement (re-writing essay or wiki-entry, or completing an alternative assignment).
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
In combination with (sections) of the following classic works, we will provide reading list specific for each week’s theme.
Barber, Karin. 2006. Africa's hidden histories : everyday literacy and making the self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Bowe, Heather, Kylie Martin and Howard Manns. 2014. Communication across cultures: Mutual understanding in a global world. 2nd Edition. Cambridge: CUP.
Bibhash, Choudhury. 2016. “Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Decolonising the Mind: Ngugi and the language question in African literature”, Reading Postcolonial Theory, p.53-72.
Djité, Paulin G. 2008. The Sociolinguistics of Development in Africa. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Finnegan, Ruth. 2016. Oral Literature in Africa : World Oral Literature Series (Volume 1) Open Book Publishers.
Hamilton, Carolyn. 2002. Refiguring the Archive. Dordrecht [etc.] : Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Mazrui, Alamin M., & Kharang, Alhaji G. S. C. 1990. Language and Politics in Africa. University of Nairobi Press.
Wolff, H. Ekkehard. 2016. Language and development in Africa: perceptions, ideologies and challenges. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Reuvensplaats
Remarks
Class attendance is mandatory.