Health & Trauma in African Lit

Catalog description

Where do stories of illness begin - and end? How do experiences of trauma, disease and disability shape one’s sense of self and others? Literary and cinematic representations of health and trauma in African postcolonial and contemporary literature and film will be the main focus of this course. We will analyze how writers and filmmakers from across the continent have engaged with ideas of health, trauma and the body to complicate dominant media representations of Africa that imagine the continent as a place of rampant disease, famine, and generalized suffering. We will also explore how disease and trauma impacts the relationship of individuals to their physical and spiritual world; how characters cope with their traumatic histories; portraits of bodily and psychological maladies associated with colonization; health and (dis)ability in postcolonial nation-building; as well as major historical and cultural threads that inform these themes. We will read short stories, novels, testimony and memoir by Titsi Dangarembga, Aminata Forna, Ousmane Sembene, Chinua Achebe, etc. and analyze films such as Xala and Elesin Oba to understand how literature and film stage debates about health and wellness, changing conceptions of health on the continent as well as possibilities of coping with traumatic experiences and realities. Our discussion of these narratives will be accompanied by theoretical texts in medical humanities, trauma studies, disability studies, and psychoanalysis as well as literature on memory, testimony and healing and working through trauma. We will learn, ultimately, how to imagine more empathic care by improving our ability to listen to, empathize with, and communicate equitably with other human beings. Offered regularly.