Africa at Noon: ERASING WOMEN? COMPARING ANGOLESE AND POSTCOLONIAL NARRATIVES ON LATE 19TH CENTURY ANGOLA

This is a virtual event, open to all. Click here to join. You may find the dial-in information here.

ABSTRACT:

This lecture weaves together fiction literature and history to examine the gendered subtext of narratives of colonisation in late 19th century Angola. Comparing novels written at the turn of the twentieth century with post-independence fiction, it analyses the relation between masculinity and anti-colonialism, while exploring the century-long connection between writing and resistance in Angola.

BIO

Dorothée’s research interests revolve mostly on postcolonial Africa, with a particular focus on the connection between literature, history and gender. Her doctoral dissertation offered an intellectual history of Angola through the analysis of fiction literature, questioning the relevance of the disciplinary divide between literature and history in an African context, examining the ambivalent status and role of writers in Angola after independence, and highlighting the misogynistic nature of the Angolan struggle for liberation. Her current project adopts a comparative perspective and looks at the postcolonial literature of Zimbabwe, Angola, Algeria and the Congo (Brazzaville) to examine the literary legacies of revolution and internal conflict in postcolonial Africa. At Oxford, Dorothée has taught Lusophone African literature to undergraduates and graduates, on authors such as Pepetela and Mia Couto, as well as on childhood in Lusophone Literature, African historical novels and Women Writers from Lusophone Africa.