Academic Catalogs

ENGL A163: Literature of Africa and the African Diaspora

Course Outline of Record
Item Value
Eff Term Fall 2026
Curriculum Committee Approval Date 11/12/2025
Top Code 150100 - English
Units 3 Total Units 
Hours 54 Total Hours (Lecture Hours 54)
Total Outside of Class Hours 108
Total Student Learning Hours 162
Course Credit Status Credit: Degree Applicable (D)
Material Fee No
Basic Skills Not Basic Skills (N)
Repeatable No
Open Entry/Open Exit No
Grading Policy Standard Letter (S), 
  • Pass/No Pass (B)
Associate Arts Local General Education (GE)
  • Area 3 Arts and Humanities 3A Theory (OC1)
Associate Science Local General Education (GE)
  • Area 3B Humanities (OSC2)

Course Description

Read, analyze, and write on important literary texts from Africa and the African diaspora. Explore the historical, cultural, philosophical, and aesthetic implications of representative works of African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean, and Euro-African literature. Formulate and produce written analyses of assigned works. Enrollment Limitation: ENGL A163H; students who complete ENGL A163 may not enroll in or receive credit for ENGL A163H. ADVISORY: ENGL A100. Transfer Credit: CSU; UC.

Course Level Student Learning Outcome(s)

  1. Write analytical arguments about African and African diasporic literature and its historical, philosophical, cultural, and aesthetic influences. \\n

Course Objectives

  • Demonstrate familiarity with important concepts, discourses, and theoretical approaches related to African and African diasporic literature.
  • Analyze and interpret culturally significant literary texts by African and African diasporic writers, with attention to questions of history, race, gender, class, culture, language.
  • Relate African and African diasporic literature to its historical, philosophical, social, political, cultural, and/or aesthetic contexts.
  • Actively and critically read a variety of culturally significant African and African diasporic literature.
  • Compose formal written analyses of texts that demonstrate appropriate academic discourse and the conventions of critical literary analysis relevant to the study of African and African diasporic literature
  • Appreciate how a work of literature can address, expand, and argue political and social issues relevant to African and African diasporic history and thought.

Lecture Content

LECTURE CONTENT: 

  1. Pre-20th-century African history and context

    1. Oral traditions and indigenous languages

    2. Pre-colonial texts

      1. The Tale of Sinuhe; ancient Egyptian love poetry; Stela of Taimhotep

      2. Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples

    3. The slave trade

    4. European colonization

      1. Machemba, letter to Major von Wissman

    5. African independence

  2. 20th- and 21st-century African literature

a. Oral tradition: Tales of Amadou Koumba, transcribed by Birago Diop 

b. Novels: Thomas Mofolo, Chaka; Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard; Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk; Kateb Yacine, Nedjma; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat ; Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons; Nawal el Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero; Mariama Bâ, So Long a Letter; Tahar ben Jelloun; Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade; Tsitsi Dangaremba, Nervous Conditions; Mia Couto, Sleepwalking Land; Nuruddin Farah, Maps; Phaswane Mpe, Welcome to Our Hillbrow; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus; Boubacar Boris Diop, Murambi: The Book of Bones; Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Most Secret Memory of Men

c. Short Stories: Ousmane Sembène, African Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary African Writing; Assia Djebar, Women of Algiers in their Apartment 

d. Poetry: Leopold Sedar Senghor, selected poetry; Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo, selected poetry; Mongane Wally Serote, selected poetry; José Craveirinha, Karingana ua Karingana; Wole Soyinka, selected poetry; Kwame Dawes, selected poetry

e. Drama: Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman; Efua Sutherland, The Marriage of Anansewa; Ama Ata Aidoo, The Dilemma of a Ghost; Bole Butake, Shoes and Four Men in Arms; Rose Mbowa, Mother Uganda and Her Children

f. Film: Ousmane Sembène, Xala and Black Girl; Nollywood films; Mati Diop, Atlantics 

g. Non-fiction: Wole Soyinkia, Ake: The Years of Childhood; Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands; Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House; Cheikh Anta Diop; V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind

3. Literature of the African Diaspora

a. Caribbean: Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince; Édouard Glissant, selected poetry; Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to a Native Land, A Tempest; Edwige Danticat, Krik? Krak!; Maryse Condé, Tree of Life: A Novel of the Caribbean; Derek Walcott, selected poetry; Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco; Kamau Brathwaite, selected poetry; Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place; Kei Miller, Kingdom of Empty Bellies, Fear of Stones and Other Stories

b. African-American:

1. Early Oral and Written Traditions: narratives and autobiographies, antebellum essays, and poetry written by enslaved and free Africans in the New World, including the work of Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, Phillis Wheatley, Frances E.W. Harper, Lucy Terry, and Frederick Douglass

2. Literature of the Civil War, Early and Post-Reconstruction: Poetry, essays, speeches, and short fiction including the work of Charles Chesnutt, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson, James Weldon Johnson, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and W. E. B. DuBois.

3. The New Negro Movement/Harlem Renaissance and the Chicago Black Renaissance: Novels, plays, poetry, essays and short fiction by writers including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Nella Larsen of the Harlem Renaissance as well as Lorraine Hansberry, Arna Bontemps, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, and Fenton Johnson of the Chicago Black Renaissance.

4. Mid-Century Urban Realism and the Black Arts Movement: Novels, poetry, essays, speeches, and plays by writers such as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, Alice Childress, Welton Smith, Mari Evans, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan, Etheridge Knight, and Nikki Giovanni.

5. Contemporary Literature: Novels, poetry, essays, speeches, and plays by writers such as Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, Ishmael Reed, Samuel R. Delany,  Pearl Cleage, Ntozake Shange, and Ernest Gaines. Also, a close look at the work of more contemporary authors such as James McBride, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Colson Whitehead, Claudia Rankine, James McBride, and others. 

c. Europe: Alain Mabanckou, Blue White Red; Fatou Diome, The Belly of the Atlantic; Azouz Begag, Shantytown Kid; Mehdi Charef, Tea in the Harem; Zadie Smith, White Teeth; Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other; 

4. Critical reading and writing strategies

  • Close reading of literary and theoretical texts
  • Observation vs inference
  • Introduction to African and African diasporic literature in various aesthetic genres (oral vs. written traditions; poetry, drama, novel, short story, film)
  • Putting literature in conversation with theory
  • Reading critically in translation and across cultural/linguistic contexts
  • Putting texts in dialogue

5.     Writing Strategies

  • Analytical interpretation
  • Argumentation
  • Summary and description
  • Evaluation and Application
  • Thesis development
  • Research skills and MLA citation

Method(s) of Instruction

  • Lecture (02)

Instructional Techniques

Lecture and application of ideas, discussion, instructor feedback on written papers and discussion, exams, peer feedback.

Reading Assignments

Reading Assignments: Students will spend a minimum of 4-6 hours per week outside of class researching writers and secondary sources, reading literary works--including but not limited to poems, plays, and prose--and critical analyses relevant to the period.

Writing Assignments

Students will average about 2 hours per week writing--a minimum of 3000 words (15 pages, 12 pt., double-spaced typed) about African and African diasporic literature: (a) a minimum of 2000 words (10 pages) of the writing must be in the form of analytical essays, (b) the other writings may be in the form of tests requiring primarily short and/or long essay responses, journal writings, creative modeling of the literature, written notes outlining oral presentations, written scripts for film/video presentations, or other types of writings that demonstrate an understanding of the literature.

Out-of-class Assignments

Students will spend a minimum of between 4-6 hours each week on writing assignments--including(but not limited to) essays, summaries, reading responses, research essays using secondary sources and take-home exams.

Study Non-Contact Hours Recommended

108

Methods of Student Evaluation

  • Midterm Exam
  • Final Exam
  • Short Quizzes
  • Written Assignments
  • Essay Examinations
  • Projects (Individual/Group)
  • Problem Solving Exercises
  • Oral Presentations
  • Skills Demonstration

Demonstration of Critical Thinking

Scheduled written examinations, including a midterm and final exam; short written discussions of the works and ideas related to them, weekly quizzes.

Required Writing, Problem Solving, Skills Demonstration

Write a minimum of 3000 words (15 pages, 12 pt. double-spaced typed) about African and African diasporic literature: (a) a minimum of 2000 words (10 pages) of the writing must be in the form of analytical essays, (b) the other writings may be in the form of tests requiring primarily short and/or long essay responses, journal writings, creative modeling of the literature, written notes outlining oral presentations, written scripts for film/video presentations, or other types of writings that demonstrate an understanding of the literature.

Resources Subscreen

  • Textbook: Edwige Danticat. We’re Alone. Graywolf (2024).
  • Textbook: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. The Most Secret Memory of Men. Penguin (2023).
  • Textbook: Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez et al. African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices. UW Press (2011).
  • Textbook: Kevin Young. African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song. Library of America (2020).

Eligible Discipline(s)

  • English: Master’s degree in English, literature, comparative literature, or composition OR bachelor’s degree in any of the above AND master’s degree in linguistics, TESL, speech, education with a specialization in reading, creative writing, or journalism OR the equivalent. Master's degree required.