African Women Playwrights

Catalog description

African Women Playwrights is a reading-intensive course that focuses on the structural and narrative diversification of the theatrical texts written by women from the continent in the 20th and 21st century. We’ll critique the plays as both literature and dramatic texts intended for production. What is clearly evident in African women playwrights’ writing is its focus on women’s agency; generational legacies; tensions among tradition, colonialism, and modernism; unresolved issues between tribal and national identities; family relationships; intimacy and commitment; the spiritual conflicts set from among the worlds of rituals, polytheism and monotheism; the challenging coexistence among Christianity, Islam and Judaism; the impact of the global diaspora on African identity; and the intersecting issues of blackness, Africanness and womanhood.