At this critical intersection of world history, how can the experiences of 2020 and beyond be imagined through African eyes?

This creative writing exploration will focus on speculative and experimental fiction to create worlds and (re)imagined experiences centred on Africa: its past, present, and futures.

African Spiritual Systems, Magical Realism, ‘Animism’, Oraliterature, Sci fi, Fantasy, Graphic Illustration/Novel are forms that can richly accentuate African history, politics (such as Pan-Africanism) and vast cultures, and project far-reaching, critically redemptive narratives on African futures. These themes will be debated and contextualised to underscore the ways they are used to situate Africa at the origin and centre of humanity.

Online Delivery and Teaching:

A mix of lectures, seminars and inspired writing. Each week, based on a set theme, you will initiate/develop a piece of writing to be shared during seminar break-outs for peer feedback and tutorial analysis. You will be expected to consider this course a journey of re-discovery, decolonisation and a re-centering process, regarding the peoples and places of the Continent and its diaspora.

You will read from selected texts/extracts which will form the basis of seminar discussions to inspire your own illuminated writing. A reading list and outline will be sent upon registering for the course.

Register here

Course Tutor: Dr Michelle Yaa Asantewa

Writer and Independent Scholar, Yaa Asantewa was born in Guyana, South America and migrated to the UK in 1980. Her interest in African spiritual practices and cultural identity inspired her Ph.D. thesis on Guyanese Komfa. She set up Way Wive Wordz Publishing, Editing and Tuition Services, an education platform to accommodate a range of learning and creative aspirations. Her published work includes novels: Elijah, Something Buried in the Yard; The Awakening and Other Poems; Guyanese Komfa: The Ritual Art of Trance and Mama Lou Tales: A Folkloric biography of a Guyanese Elder. The anthology, In Search of Mami Wata: Narratives and Images of African Water Spirits, for which she is Editor, was published in November 2020.

This course runs from Wednesday, 31st March until Wednesday 5th May 2021.

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