(Please remember that blogs are due on the Wednesdays before class by 10pm)
Writing the Colonial
Week 1.
Jan.19 Introduction and overview of key concepts
Week 2.
Jan. 23 Wendy Griswold – “To Understand the Novel in Nigeria”
Jan. 26* (Blog #1 Due) Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (Chapters 1 -13)
Grad students: Ann Stoler and Frederick Cooper – “Between Metropole and Colony”
Week 3.
Jan. 30* Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (Chapters 14 – end)
Chinua Achebe –“English and the African Writer”
Feb. 2 (Blog # 2 Due) Wole Soyinka – Death and the King’s Horseman (entire play)
Biafra: A Nation Divided
Week 4.
Feb. 6* Chimamanda Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun (Chapters 1-6)
Feb. 9* (Blog # 3 Due) Half of a Yellow Sun (Chapters 7-18)
Grad students: Select scholarly article on Adichie (or you may elect to do this for the following week instead)
Week 5.
Feb. 13* Half of a Yellow Sun (Chapters 19-28)
Feb 16 (Blog #4 Due) Half of Yellow Sun (Chapters 29-end)
Oil Money
Week 6.
Feb. 20 In-class Screening: Sweet Crude
Feb. 23* (Blog # 5 Due) Ben Okri – “Stars of the New Curfew”
Karin Barber – “Popular Reactions to the Petro-naira”
Grad students: Andrew Apter – The Pan-African Nation (Chapters 1, 6, 7, & 8)
Popular Literature
Week 7.
Feb. 27 Stephanie Newell – Introduction to Readings in African Popular Fiction
Donatus Nwoga – “Onitsha Market Literature”
Select 1 Onitsha market pamphlet from website: http://onitsha.diglib.ku.edu/tdc/pamphlets.htm
March 1 (Blog # 6 Due) Graham Furness – “Hausa Creative Writing in the 1930s”
Alhaji Abubakar Imam – “The Water of Cure”
Brian Larkin – “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers”
Grad students: Fredric Jameson – “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”
Yoruba Cosmology
Week 8.
March 5 Wole Soyinka, “The Fourth Stage”
Wole Soyinka, “Idanre”
Amos Tutola, “The Complete Gentleman”
March 8 (Extra Grad Student Blog) Grad Students: Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise (Chapters 1, 3, 5)
Undergraduates: Paper 1 Due!
Week 9. Spring Break! (Extra credit if you spend it in Nigeria!)
Living in Lagos
Week 10.
March 19 Mathew Gandy – “Learning from Lagos”
Rem Koolhaus – “Lagos: How it Works”
March 22* (Blog #7 Due) Chris Abani – Graceland (Chapters 1 -10)
Grad Students: Select scholarly article on Abani (or you can elect to do this for the following week instead)
Week 11.
March 26* Chris Abani – Graceland (Chapters 11-22)
March 29 (Blog #8 Due) Chris Abani – Graceland (Chapter 23- end)
Gender and Sexuality
Week 12.
April 2 * Lola Shoneyin – The Secret Lives of the Four Wives (Chapters 1-13)
April 5 (Blog #9 Due) The Secret Lives of the Four Wives (Chapter 13-end)
Graduate Students: Susan Andrade – “Introduction” to The National Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958-1988
View on your own (before April 9th): Franco Sacchi’s This is Nollywood
Week 13.
April 9 In-class Screening: Emotional Crack
April 12 (Blog #10 Due) Jonathan Haynes – “Introduction” to Nigerian Video Films
Lindsey Green-Simms and Unoma Azuah – “The Video Closet: Nollywood’s Gay-Themed Movies”
Grad students: Rahul Rao, “Queer in the Time of Terror”
The Art of Scamming
Week 14.
April 16 In-class Screening: The Master, Part 1
Book Review Due!
View The Master, Part 2 at home (before April 19)
April 19 (Blog #11 Due) Daniel Jordan Smith – “’Urgent Business Relationship’: Nigerian Email Scams”
Brian Larkin, “Extravagant Aesthetics: Instability and the Excessive World” (Chapter 6)
The Nigerian-American Experience
Week 15.
April 23* View at home on Youtube: Adichie, “Danger of a Single Story”
Chimamanda Adichie, “Imitation,” “A Private Experience,” “On Monday of Last Week”
April 26* (Blog #12 Due) Grad students turn in finalized abstract rather than blog
Adichie, “Jumping Monkey Hill, “The Thing Around Your Neck,” “The Shivering”
Week 16.
April 30 Full Draft of Paper Due
Final Papers Due May 4th by noon
Nigerian Literature 