Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Abstract

This portfolio contains four related essays concerned with issues of race and migration in literary creations of diasporic African writers and film texts by African American film producers. The first essay offers a general exploration of contemporary African diasporic writings and the pervading Afropolitan politics of home and belonging. The next essay in the collection provides a theoretical grounding for this writing genre, tracing the connections between the theory, Afropolitanism, and earlier modes of theorizing global race relations such as postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism. The third essay explores the application of these theories to Teju Cole’s diasporic novel, Open City, explicating how the Afropolitan identity politics finds expression in literary works of diasporic African writers. The fourth essay traces elements of the African tradition in the contemporary life of the black diaspora and how filmmaker, Julie Dash, explores these elements as resistance tools to culture death in Daughters of the Dust. All of these works revolve around the central theme of the African Identity and how the African migrant continuously struggle with the negotiation and assertion of this identity in a racially defined global order.

Specialization

Literary and Textual Studies

First reader

Dr. Khani Begum

Second reader

Ms. Kimberly Spallinger

Publication Date

Fall 12-12-2019

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