African Studies

This course explores how concepts of mobility, boundaries, and (un)belonging are negotiated in modern travelogues about Europe by afrodiasporic as well as African writers. In the postcolonial fashion of "Irritating Europe", the class examines central ideas of European self-imagery, such as its humanism and supposed progressiveness. Students analyze how Black travel literature not only functions as a deconstruction of colonial discourses but also establishes a new literary geography: the Afropean space.