Research Guides: POLS 283: African Politics and Literature (HC): Books

Finding Scholarly Studies in Books

Use the Tripod catalog This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window to look for relevant books owned by Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore.

The following subject searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a title search in the Tripod Catalog to find some relevant material and then use the subject headings assigned to those titles to find more books.

"african literature" [Subject] AND politic* [Keyword search]

boubacar diop [Keyword] Includes books by and about the author

"women authors" AND "african literature" [Keyword] Newest titles first

senegal politics and government [Subject]

Tripod Catalog
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Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges each have their own Tripod catalog. Use Tripod to find relevant scholarship owned by your home library as well as print resources at the other two schools. To see digital material owned only by BMC, use the BMC Tripod link (tripod.brynmawr.edu). You will need to be on the BMC campus in order to access those digital resources.
Change the resource group on the search bar to limit results to specific materials like books and films.
Use the Request link in an item's record to have it delivered to the library of your choice . Note that you need to log into Tripod in order to see the Request link. If you are already in Tripod, use the Sign In link at the top of every page to log in.

WorldCat
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An important place to look for materials not owned by the TriCollege Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 400 million records describing items owned by libraries around the world.
Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan. Use the Find It button in individual WorldCat records to request titles for your use.

Borrowing beyond the Tri-Co
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1. E-Z Borrow - Request books that are not available in Tripod. It usually takes three days or less for E-Z Borrow books to arrive.
2. Interlibrary Loan (ILL) - Request books not in E-Z Borrow. They can come in as little as four or five days. Also use ILL to request films, dissertations, sound recordings, and other materials.
3. Articles - Request journal articles not available in your college library. You will receive digital copies of the articles in your email sometimes as quickly as the following day.

Selected Books

Narratives of Catastrophe: Boris Diop, ben Jelloun, Khatibi by Nasrin Qader
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ISBN: 9780823230488
Publication Date: 2009-03-16
Narratives of Catastrophe tells the story of the relationship between catastrophe, in the senses of "down turn" and "break," and narration as "recounting" in the senses suggested by the French term récit in selected texts by three leading writers from Africa.
The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958-1988 by Susan Z. Andrade
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ISBN: 9780822348979
Publication Date: 2011-11-02
Since Africa's early female novelists tended to write about the family, while male authors often addressed national politics, it was assumed that women writers were uninterested in the nation. Andrade argues that female authors engaged national politics through allegory. In their work, the family stands for the nation. She analyzes novels by Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta; novellas by Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Aminata Sow Fall; and bildungsromans by Tsitsi Dangarembga and Nuruddin Farah.
Pan-African American Literature: Signifyin(g) Immigrants in the Twenty-First Century by Stephanie Li
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Publication Date: 2018-09-14
Writers of the new African diaspora are exploring black subjectivity. This book is dedicated to charting the contours of literature by African born or identified authors centered around life in the U.S.. Authors analyzed include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dinaw Mengestu and NoViolet Bulawayo.
The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership by Mukoma Wa Ngugi
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ISBN: 047205368X
Publication Date: 2018-03-27
This book situates South African and African-language literature of the late 1880s through the early 1940s in relation to the literature of decolonization that spanned the 1950s through the 1980s, and the contemporary generation of African writers. The book explores both aesthetics and politics in this African literary tradition.
Theory of African Literature by Chidi Amuta;
Publication Date: 2017-06-15
First published in 1989, this study challenged conventional assessments. Amuta argues that African literature is best approached from the wider framework of the dismantling of colonial rule and Western hegemony in Africa. Amuta draws upon both Marxist aesthetics and theories of African culture espoused by Fanon and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to establish a new language of criticism which he applies to works by Achebe, Sembène, Neto, Brutus and others.