African Literature

Iya Mawiyah Bomani, Kamali Academy Online

Course Goals:

The goal for this course is to help students develop a greater appreciation of cultural, thematic, and aesthetic representations found in African Literature. This will be achieved through the active engagement of students in concrete observations, interpreting facts and fiction, evaluating details, and creating meaningful connections in comparative and contrasting analysis of the literature.

Course Objectives:

  1. Students should be able to make cogent judgments in the areas of style, author’s purpose and meaning.
  1. Students should be able to compare and contrast through written essays various artistic devices in character development such as shifting points of view, sarcastic humor, irony, and social consciousness; and in plot development areas such as suspense, foreshadowing, symbolism, and extended metaphor.
  1. Finally, this course will provide studentsthe opportunity to creatively explore (through their own written expressions) thegenres of nonfiction, fiction, drama and poetry.

Required Texts:

Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah. We will read this book during our second half of the semester. Other class reading materials will be uploaded to the Kamali Academy website.

Course Content:

Important dates and deadlines will be given in the near future.

Unit1 The African Literary Tradition

Unit 2 Folk Tales

Unit 3 Morality Tales

Unit 4 Myths of Explanation

Unit 5 Metamorphosis in writing to develop the character of a character or metamorphosis which serves as the result of negative character traits

Unit 6 What does an African Epic look like?

Unit 7 Exploration of Two Thousand Seasons

Grades:

All grades posted to creative writing samples and in response to discussion questions serve only to give you an idea where you are in your ability to decipher meaning in literature. It also serves to broaden your horizon as a writer and overall creative thinker.

There is no way to accurately assess one person’s point of view over another. We are all capable of expounding upon our own ideas, beliefs, and cultural truths. I simply am seeking to nudge you ALL to think outside the box and voice your thoughts as all words have meaning and power.

Pretest and Posttest:

The pretest will be either an essay of 700-1000 words typed and double-spaced or you can create a PowerPoint to explain the answer to this question:

Do you believe African Literature is important to the world we live in?

(This essay will be assigned the first Monday and due the Friday of that same week? The PowerPoint must incorporate music, graphics and words. I still want to see your thoughts expressed in words on the slides. So even if you create a rap or a song, I want to see the lyrics typed out.)

The post test will also be an essay. This topic will be posted at a later date.

Thanks for taking this class. Let’s spread our truth to the world.