Seminar Anglophone World Literatures and Afropolitanism Di 10.30

In this seminar we will explore Anglophone world literatures and their multiple relations to so-called Afropolitanism', presumably a distinctively African form of cosmopolitanism. While bringing together diverse literary traditions that can no longer be related to a single, fixed and stable point of reference, Anglo-African world literatures are also deeply engaged with modelling genuinely African modes of expression and identification. We are therefore going to leave the confines of national approaches to literature behind and explore the dynamic entanglements, processes of transfer and exchange that shape the poetics and politics of Anglo-African world literatures. In the course of the seminar, we will also examine key literary, theoretical and political concerns related to the buzz word world literatures' and Afropolitanism', including old and new diasporas, globalisation and migration, postcolonial nationalism and hybridity, power relations and travelling. Close analyses of major Anglo-African world literatures (e.g. Teju Cole's Open City, Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears) will reveal how Anglo-African world literatures dramatize processes of travelling, migration and identification that relate to both specific local realities and wider global networks. Last but not least we will discuss the many challenges that world literatures offer for English Studies and established notions of (national) history, culture, and tradition.   Suggested Introductory Reading:   Apter, Emily. Against World Literature. On The Politics of Untranslatability. London, New York: Verso, 2013. Bassnett, Susan. Translation, The New Critical Idiom. Abington, UK: Routledge, 2014. Damrosch, David. World Literature in Theory. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. ---, and Theo D'Haen. The Routledge Companion to World Literature. New York: Routledge, 2012. Friedman, Susan Stanford. World Modernism, World Literature, and Comparativity. In: The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms. (Ed.) Mark Wollaeger, with Matt Eatough. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 499525. Gikandi, Simon. -Foreword: On Afropolitanism-. Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore. (Eds.) Jennifer Wawrzinek and J. K. S. Makokha. Amsterdam and New York: Radopi, 2011. 9-11. Mbembe, Achille. -Afropolitanism-. Trans. Laurent Chauvel. In: Africa Remix Contemporary Art of a Continent. (Eds.) Simon Njani and Lucy Duran. Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2007. 26-30. Rosendahl Thomsen, Mads. Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literatures. New York: Continuum International Publishing, 2010. Selasi, Taiye. Bye-Bye Babar (What is Afropolitanism?). In: Ghana Must Go. Taiye Selasi. London: Penguin, 2014. 322-26.   A detailed bibliography will be made available at the beginning of the seminar. Englisch (MA, PO 2013) Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2016/17 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Neumann Birgit