COML 3977

Body Politics in African Literature, Cinema, and New Media

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2024-2025 Catalog. Courses of Study 2024-2025 is scheduled to publish mid-June.

This course examines how writers, filmmakers, and content creators from Africa engage with and revise public images of bodies—specifically pleasure, queerness, sex strikes, etc. Our inquiry also surveys theorists' commitment to highlighting forms of self-fashioning and agency/responsibility in addition to troubling problematic tropes of pathologization and excess. These topical explorations will be achieved through analyses of storytelling, digitality, the aestheticization of violence, and social change theories. Through contemporary films, digital platforms, novels, and essays, we will reflect on the precarious yet empowering nature of the body. Public speaking (class discussions, student presentations) and deep attention to analysis and writing (reaction papers, an abstract, an annotated bibliography, and a final paper) will help you refine your understanding of body politics.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2025SP, 2021SP

Distribution Category (GLC-AS, SCD-AS) (CA-AG, D-AG)

When Offered Spring.

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