As a type of formal assemblage (rather than a periodising category or a descriptor of closeness to ‘reality’), realism has been central to the formation of African canons. From the path-breaking concreteness of the Achebean novel to the insurgent social pedagogies of Ngugi, Sembène, early Dangarembga and more, Afro-classical realisms have become associated with the socio-analytical and teacherly functions of the novel form. The symposium aims to broaden out the range of African contexts in which to problematise the explanatory power of this widely circulating term.

Attuned to recording both the violent spread of global capitalism and various modes of resistance to it, African (and other global) realisms are capable of intersecting with other literary modes and forms – modernism, adventure fiction, fantasy and allegory among them. We invite engagements with both recent and classical Afro-realist texts and formations in the light of recent debates on African/Postcolonial/World Literature and textual form, genre, history and reception. We particularly welcome discussions of south-eastern African literatures and cultures, 21C texts, locally published texts and texts in indigenous languages, and we encourage (but do not limit participation to) the following areas of critical interest:

• Gender, sexuality and African realisms;
• African appropriations of the historical novel and/or the Bildungsroman;
• African realisms, narrativity and affect;
• African realisms, African modernisms and their political inflections;
• Realism and Afrofuturism;
• African realisms and various kinds of allegory (national, cosmopolitan, Christian, Manichean and other);
• African realisms as peripheral forms;
• African realisms and the internet;
• Local African realist texts and their receptions.

Please send a 300-word abstract and any queries to Ranka Primorac ([email protected]) before the end of 20 August 2023. Accepted paper-givers will be notified by 20 September.

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The AHRC-sponsored Textual Worlds of South-Eastern Africa Network are: Ranka Primorac (University of Southampton), Grace Musila (University of the Witwatersrand), Brendon Nicholls (University of Leeds) and Lynda Spencer (Rhodes University). The short annotated reading list below is meant to inspire, rather than limit, your thinking.

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Jackson, Jeanne-Marie, South African Literature’s Russian Soul (Bloomsbury, 2015) – South Africa and comparative realisms.

Jameson, Fredric, The Antinomies of Realism (Verso, 2020)- Euro-classical realism, narrativity and affect.

Freedgood, Elaine, Worlds Enough: The Invention of Realism in the Victorian Novel (Princeton UP, 2020) – On the need to decolonise Euro-classical canons.

Popescu, Monica, At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies and the Cold War (Duke UP, 2020) – African realism/modernism continua & the Cold War.

Primorac, Ranka, ‘Against “African Popular Literature”, or: The Weeping Woman” in Grace Musila (ed), Routledge Handbook of African Popular Culture (Routledge, 2022) – on the need to resignify some sections of African literature formerly known as ‘the popular’.

Ten Kortenaar, Neil, Debt, Law, Realism: Nigerian Writers Imagine the State at Independence (McGill-Queens UP, 2021) – On Afro-classical realism and the state.

WREC, Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature, (Liverpool UP, 2015) – on peripheral realisms, among other things.