Seminar Guidelines

Each seminar participant will be required to sign up for at least one class presentation on the week’s readings. The presenter/s will be required to formulate about 4 questions based on the readings and present them to the group. If there is more than one presenter, they should work as a team. Please email me your questions by Wednesday midnight at the very latest so that they can be uploaded on to the website.

The questions can be up to a paragraph long and should aim at provoking discussion. In other words, you are being asked to write questions to enable conversation; you are not being asked to write questions for exams. So make sure the questions are not ones that can be answered in an objective manner by anyone who has read the text.

Some tips:

Think of a problem that the text poses, either formal or thematic.

Choose a passage that you find rich and enigmatic. Include what about it can open up discussion on the text.

Week	Text	Thursday, 2-3 pm	Thursday, 4-5 pm
1	Introduction to African Literature	-	-	-
2		Fran and Mayowa	-	-
3		Jahnvi
4		Rajvi
5		Tanisha
7		Rowan
8		Claire
9		Safiyaa
10		Lia

TERM 2

WEEK 8 (Claire)

3. Discuss the meanings and stakes of nature in the book: wether in periphery or within the city.

WEEK 4 (Rajvi)

1. Patriarchy and Power question

• Chart the appearances of the lions in the text. Is there something noteworthy about their symbolism? What are the literary, social and metaphysical meanings of the lionesses, and their attacks? In particular, why are both the lions and their victims female? Speak about sisterhood in the novel.

2. Nature question

• How do the African bush and its inhabitants (the animals) interact with the humans in the story? Explore the relationship between the human abode and the lions’ abode. Do they seem to merge, in the text? Does one have an effect on the other, in a social or metaphysical sense, as well as physical?

• Think of other aspects of nature here too. Such as the unnamed neighbour and the fish.

• What is the relation between ‘feminine’ energy and nature?

• Environment and protection. Poaching. The hunter speaks of how young and pregnant female animals should not be killed. Claims he is the last hunter.

• Order and chaos

• Man and beast

3. Religion question

• Follow the religious allusions in the text. How do they shape meanings?

4. Themes and structural choices in the novel and how they are explored

• Speech in the novel is signified with italics.

• Each chapter is prefaced with an epithet.

• There are two main perspectives.

• Discuss the interactions between language, superstition, patriarchy, communication and memory, in the text.

• Why has the writer made such choices?

5. Family question

• Discuss family, tradition, male authority, superstition and the significance of the grandfather/ father figure for both narrators.

6. Ghost question

• Chart the ghosts in the text. Explore their literary and social meanings.

WEEK 3 (Jahnavi)

2. Gordimer outlines that the novel is “not a detective story”, explore the ways in which the writer expressed human contradictions regarding race, social relations, ethical authority and sexual identity through the perspective of the white protagonists.
3. Analyse the symbol of the gun in the setting of apartheid South Africa. Does the prevalence of guns and violence skew Duncan’s culpability for his crime? How is the writer commenting on the dangerous accessibility of firearms in apartheid South Africa?

WEEK 2

Fran

WEEK 10

Tanisha

1. Prominent themes in The Adivasi Will Not Dance stories include the condition of women in a patriarchal society and poverty. What is a key example that you can point out which presents the sights thin of the Adivasi people?
2. For Satyajit Ray, dir. Days and Nights in the Forest “In Ray’s films, all the women are of superior moral sensibility, while the men are like helpless children,” Tagore explained. - do you agree with this statement?

WEEK 9

Jahnvi

1. How does the novel depict Balram’s views on social mobility and the caste system in India?

2. The narrative is addressed to the Premier of China, how does this narrative devise affect the reception of the novel?

3. Explore the symbol of the Rooster Coop, how do Balram’s ideologies regarding morality and corruption evolve throughout the novel?

Lia:

WEEK 7 (Krishna): No submission

WEEK 5 (Fran/Ambia)

Fran

WEEK 4 (CLAIRE/SAFIYAA)

SAFIYAA

1. How do you think the form and structure of the narrative convey the impact of war, occupation and trauma?
2. What do you think about the parallels and contrasts portrayed in the novel and their significance (e.g., the narrator and Hussain, Baba and Khadim Hussain)?
3. At the end of the novel, the narrator sets fire to the corpses in the valley, describing it as his "only decision in years". What do you think is the significance of this act - of ending the novel on this note and in relation to the rest of the narrative?

CLAIRE

1- How is The Collaborator a tale of isolation from every standpoint: geographical, social, and psychological?

2- India and the current government are described as ‘a colossus with countless arms and limbs and tongues and claws…’ (p.278 Penguin Edition) which cannot be resisted. How does this put into perspective the narrator’s constant inaction leading to his collaboration with Kadian and underlines the moral dilemma put upon the people: whether to choose the life-threatening path of resistance against oppression or to choose a passive behaviour (thus collaboration) in an attempt to protect one’s relatives?

3- How is the line between life and death blurred by the narrator to cope with the trauma and psychological distress inflicted by his job? How does he process questions of guilt and humanity through his perceptions of nature, the dead bodies, and the people of the village?

WEEK 3 (RAJVI/MAYOWA)

RAJVI

1. Think about the symbolism of Shame throughout the novel, and its various embodiments.

• National identity? (Pakistan and its past; paralleled with the characters and their pasts)

• Sexualisation of the female body? (objectification; dismemberment; childbirth)

• Birth (background; parentage; upbringing)

• Social Status and its link to Marriage

• Manhood/ Masculinity

• Madness/ Mental issues/ Sanity (psychologically challenged = discomfort to family + scapegoated)

• Suicide and death (seen as the only “solutions” to shame. Sufiya’s suicidal grandfather and her own almost death, by her husband and father.

• Shame vs Good News. Shame implied as ‘Bad News,’ something that travels from external places into a house/ family/ internal conflict and stirs things up.

• Shame vs Shamelessness. There is no escape. Either do the judging or be judged.

2. What is the interaction between internalized misogyny, patriarchy and shame in the text? Explore instances of where these themes are focalized.

3. There is a long-standing tradition between violence and societally imposed ideas about shame in both countries. How explicitly is this relationship explored in the novel?

MAYOWA

1. How do themes of shame and shamelessness intersect despite the different storylines and subplots?

2. What do you think is the role/purpose of gendered shame in the novel?