The goal of this class is to convey to students the centrality 
of oral art as a form of literary and knowledge production in 
Africa, with special emphasis on the relevance of these cultural 
productions to the contemporary world. The relevance of oral 
communication led anthropologists to labeling African societies 
as "oral societies." The course will give a survey on word art 
in Africa as well as on criteria for generic discrimination and 
taxonomy. Besides introducing traditional genres such as 
proverbs, tricksters, myths, and legends, the course will also 
address the question of orality at our era of globalization. 
African societies, by being constantly referred to as societies 
of oral tradition,or "oral societies," are wrongly thought of as 
static and immutable. So-called popular culture (i.e., African 
modern songs/world music) uses old aesthetic principles to voice 
modern concerns with new artistic styles. A closer look at 
selected texts belonging in popular culture should help measure 
and appreciate the capacity of "oral societies" to accommodate 
permanent changes. Furthermore, popular genres in Africa help 
understand how and why the African perception and conception of 
literature is dynamic, changing not only in time, but also in 
space. This introductory course should finally contribute to a 
better understanding of Europhone African literature, a 
derivative of orality. It is to be expected that the course 
contributes to broadening the students' understanding of 
literature, a discipline dealing with verbal art, be it written 
or oral. Participants are required to come well prepared to 
class, because every meeting will centre on discussions based 
on the assigned reading or research topic.

The course will cover the following domains:
1. General introduction to word art in Africa
2. Well-speaking and early socialization of children
3. Institutional distribution of word processing
4. How to discern genres in oral literature?
5. Oral performance and social setting
6. The main generic categories (trickster, myth, song, etc.)
7. Heroic texts
8. New forms of orality by content and genre (pop music, film,
political statements, commercials, etc.)
9. Impact of orality on modern written literature
10. First steps in doing field research: The production of
"edited" texts, translation will be discussed in detail, along
with questions of fieldwork and ethics of research.
Unlike written literature, the texts discussed in oral literature
courses are always the result of editing. Therefore, an awareness
for the responsibility of editors of oral texts is capital. All
reading materials will be available in English.