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Start > Masterprogramm Kulturwissenschaften: Kritik der Gegenwart - Künste, Theorie, Geschichte (M.A.) -> Wahlbereich -> Gewalt und sozialer Protest

Lehrveranstaltungen

African Fictional Narratives on Genocide and Ethno-Religious Violence (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Ayobami Olajumoke Onanuga

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Montag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 16.10.2023 - 02.02.2024 | C 40.501 Seminarraum

Inhalt: This seminar in cultural studies focuses on the representations of genocide and ethno-religious killings in literary forms. Through engagements with theories and criticisms, we discuss the contextual realities that gave birth to wars, targeted killings and genocide and their aftermaths/implications in Nigeria and Rwanda. The seminar touches on the diversity of Nigeria’s socio-cultural and religious reality as well as Rwanda’s multi-ethnic outlook with its attendant problems of nationalism and leadership, and how these national realities culminated in Othering, violence, and genocide. Attention will be paid to the examination of the form and content of purposively selected texts to examine their representations of ethnic and religious violence and genocide. Analyses will situate these texts within the concepts of colonialism, post/neocolonialism, postcolonial discontents, ethnicity, religion, war and genocide. Frantz Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth, will serve as background text and the discussions of the fictional narratives will draw insights from it. It is expected that by the end of seminar, students would have probed the complexities and tensions behind Nigeria and Rwanda’s multifarious population and be able to relate these realities to the texts. Through these exposures, they would be expected to ask critical questions about the future of these African nation-states as portrayed in the selected texts. Primary Texts Achebe, Chinua. There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra. Penguin, 2012. Akpan, Uwem “Luxurious Hearses” Say You’re One of Them. Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2010. Akpan, Uwem “My Parents’ Bedroom” Say You’re One of Them. Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2010. Diop, Boubacar Boris. Murambi, the Book of Bones. Indiana UP, 2006. Adichie, Chimamanda Half of a Yellow Sun. Lagos: Farafina, 2006. Tadjo, Veronique. The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda. Trans, Veronique Wakerly. Zimbabwe: Weaver Press, 2002. Required Reading Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books, 1980. Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Onanuga, Ayobami. (2018). Violence and its Linguistic Framing: An Exploration of Boubacar Boris Diop’s Murambi, The Book of Bones and Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them. Journal of Literary Studies, Volume 3401 March, 2018. Note: The Primary texts and Recommended Reading are compulsory readings for the Seminar while the Further Reading List is optional for the students to consult to aid their papers. They are available in the University Library and those not listed above which might be useful for the seminar (see course schedule) will be made available electronically or through other versions. Further Reading Caplan, Gerald. “Rwanda: Walking the Road to Genocide”, eds Allan Thompson and Kofi Anan. The Media and the Rwanda Genocide. London: Pluto Press, 2007. Chirot, Daniel and McCauley Clark. Why not Kill Them All? The Logic & Prevention of Mass Political Murder. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Falola, Toyin. Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious and Secular Ideologies. USA: University of Rochester Press, 1998. Hatzfeld, Jean. Machete Season. Trans, Linda Loverdale. USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Longman, Timothy. Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Powers, Samantha. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Soyinka, Wole. Harmattan Haze on An African Spring. Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2012.