This course will focus on the figure of the storyteller in the film and literature of North Africa, West Africa, and the Caribbean islands. We will examine some representative folk tales from each of the regions considered, will study the traditional art of narrative as practiced in each of these regions, and will attempt to understand the relationship between these traditions and contemporary cultural practices. Topics to be covered will include: the aesthetics of orality, the social and political functions of telling stories, the importance of myth and literature as a repository of cultural memory, etc. The works studied will also offer insights into the history of colonialism, race and gender relations in the post-colonial era, the role of religious belief (Islam, Christianity, Voodoo, etc.), and the meaning of multiculturalism.

Primary Readings:
-Assia Djebar, Fantasia : An Algerian Cavalcade
-Werewere Liking, It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral: And, Love-Across-A-Hundred-Lives : Two Novels
-Naguib Mahfouz, The Journey of Ibn Fattouma
-V.S. Naipaul, The Middle Passage
-Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman
-The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, ed. Stewart Brown & John Wickham

Films:
Euzhan Palcy, Sugarcane Alley (Martinique)
Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Quartier Mozart (Cameroon)
Dani Kouyaté, Keïta, The Heritage of the Griot (Burkina Faso)
Djibril Diop Mambety, Hyenas (Senegal)

Readings, discussions and all assignments in English

This class satisfies GE: Areas G or E as well as Non-Western Culture
Electives in English, Film Studies, Global and International Studies