AFST224 - STORYTELLING IN AFRICA

The course focuses on oral narrative performance, sung and spoken, in both rural and urban communities of sub-Saharan Africa. Topics include storytellers' rhetorical skills, social positions, and life histories, audiences' engagement and evaluaiton of good performance; and processes of significant interpretation. Issues related to representation and translation are raised as written texts, even transcribed verbatim, are pale shadows of the vibrant, emergent performances in which storytellers emply gestural, facial, musical, spatial, and paralinguistic devices. Further, the course considers influences of oral storytelling on written literature, popular theater, and cinema in Africa.
Section 601 - SEM

T 0430PM-0730PM

BLAKELY, PAMELA

MCNEIL BUILDING 409