Land and feminism in African literature

This course traces the rich history of African and diasporic women's writing — when women began to claim literary and political voice on the continent and in the diaspora, what they wrote about, and how they developed feminist and ecofeminist frameworks rooted in their own experiences and traditions. We explore how these thinkers anticipated and shaped today's global conversations about gender, nature and justice. At a time when rising oil prices dominate Western headlines, this course asks us to shift perspective: for communities living on oil-producing land, the crisis is not one of cost but of contaminated water, destroyed ecosystems and silenced resistance — a reality African and diasporic women writers have been documenting for decades. 

The heart of the course is Imbolo Mbue's How Beautiful We Were (2021). A Cameroonian-American, Mbue writes from exactly this intersection of continent and diaspora — her novel follows a fictional African village whose land and people are devastated by an American oil company. Alongside this close reading, we will explore extracts from the ecocritical and ecofeminist writing emerging from the Niger Delta — the real landscape that partly inspired Mbue — where writers and activists have been documenting and resisting oil extraction for decades. Together, these texts invite us to ask what literature can do that journalism and policy cannot: bear witness, build community, and imagine otherwise.

*Students will receive a free copy of the novel. Other readings will be provided by the professor.*

Nov. 2: Women Writers & African Feminisms

Using Margaret Busby's landmark anthologies Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa as our map, we trace the history of African and diasporic women's writing and ask some deceptively simple questions: is there a universal definition of feminism, women, or gender? From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Beyoncé, from scholars to activist editors, we explore the rich and contested landscape of African and Black feminist thought.

Nov. 9: The "Eco" in Ecofeminism

What does "eco" actually mean — and who gets to define it? This session introduces ecofeminist theory from the French origin of its name through African voices and initiatives, including the pan-African alliance WoMin and writers like Djaili Amadou Amal, who bring ecofeminist politics into literature. We ask how the domination of land and the domination of women have historically gone hand in hand, and what resistance looks like today.

Nov. 16: Reading How Beautiful We Were

We read together from Mbue's novel, exploring its narrative voices and its portrait of corporate oil extraction. Through close reading and discussion, we uncover the real-world references woven into the fiction — from Standing Rock to the Niger Delta — and ask what literature can do that journalism cannot.

Nov. 23: The Niger Delta and Beyond

We continue our close reading of the novel while zooming out to the broader ecocritical and ecofeminist movement it emerges from — Ken Saro-Wiwa's legacy, pan-African activist alliances, and the writers documenting resistance to extraction across the continent. We end by asking what these voices mean for us today, wherever we are reading from.