The Craft of Writing

This course explores scholarly engagements with the "lost" histories of colonized, enslaved, and other subaltern groups. It asks how scholars can differently re-write colonial metanarratives of the past and, in doing so, reframe politics of the present with future implications. We will examine colonial literature, from empire to liberation movements, particularly post-World War II Africa leading up to 1960 and later freedom struggles in post-apartheid South Africa and the Greenbelt Movement of Kenya. We will investigate the impact of fiction and non-fiction on the construction of social and political landscapes.

Within the limits of this region and time frame, students will write their own 10-12 page research paper as a final project, using Western and non-Western archives, documents, and artifacts from the course.