African Crime Fiction

As early as the 1970s, crime fiction became a “legitimate” interest in international literary studies, although it arguably took another two decades before crime fiction became a regular feature in teaching and research. Although African crime fiction dates back at least to the 1960s, it took even longer before it attracted significant scholarship and classroom interest, and even today there are critical reservations with regard to a genre that some critics still regard as inherently “Western”.

Our seminar will delve into the history and theory of crime fiction, investigate two major generic models that dominated the study of crime fiction until the early 2000s (the “British” whodunnit and “American” hardboiled detective fiction), and turn in Representations of indigenous people (i.e. population groups that were subjugated and marginalized in processes of colonization and settlement and turned into minorities in lands they had inhabited for centuries or millenia) have a long history in literature and other media reaching back to the very beginnings of colonial encroachment. For much of this time, indigenous cultures and societies were represented by those who colonized them, and even today, there is a legacy of colonialist and racist signification practices that makes its presence felt in contemporary culture. At the same time, indigenous writers and artists have voiced indigenous concerns and disseminated indigenous perspectives for many decades, so that there is now a rich and diverse history of indigenous literature, art, theatre – and cinema. This seminar will look at the work of indigenous film makers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand and will explore the diversity of indigenous film making. We will discuss the politics of indigenous cinema and analyse very different aesthetic modes of “doing indigenous film”, ranging from avantgarde styles employing oral modes of narration to social drama and comedy.