african literature review

Indiana University Press

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Research in African Literatures

Edited by Kwaku Larbi Korang

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Journal Information

• Keywords: African Culture, African Literature, African Studies, Arts & Culture, Literary Studies, Modern Literature, Narratives, Poetry, Secularism, Theology

Description

Research in African Literatures , founded in 1970, is the premier journal of African literary studies worldwide and provides a forum in English for research on the oral and written literatures of Africa. In addition to thought-provoking essays, reviews of current scholarly books appear in every issue, often presented as critical essays, and a forum offers readers the opportunity to respond to issues raised in articles and book reviews. Thematic clusters of articles and frequent special issues reveal the broad interests of its readership.

• Editorial Details
• Submission Info
• Publication Ethics
• Abstract & Index
• Additional Information

Editorial Office Contact Information

• Kwaku Larbi Korang (The Ohio State University)

Associate Editors

• Adélékè Adéèkó (The Ohio State University)
• Cheik Thiam (The Ohio State University)

Managing Editor

Past Editors

• Bernth Lindfors (The University of Texas, Austin, 1970-89)
• Richard Bjornson (The Ohio State University, 1990-92)
• F. Abiola Irele (The Ohio State University, 1992-2003)
• John Conteh-Morgan (The Ohio State University, 2003-08)

Advisory Board

• Yaw Agawu-Kakraba, Pennsylvania State University Altoona, United States
• Rita Barnard, University of Pennsylvania, United States
• Gaurav Desai, University of Michigan, United States
• Isidore Diala, Imo State University, United States
• Chris Dunton, Independent Scholar
• Sule Emmanuel Egya, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Nigeria
• Olakunle George, Brown University, United States
• Simon Gikandi, Princeton University, United States
• Cilas Kemedjio, University of Rochester, United States
• Ruthmarie H. Mitsch, Managing Editor, RAL, 1989-2012
• F. Fiona Moolla, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
• Mildred Mortimer, University of Colorado Boulder, United States
• H. Adlai Murdoch, Penn State University, United States
• Gichingiri Ndigirigi, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States
• Stephanie Newell, Yale University, United States
• Christopher N. Okonkwo, Florida State University, United States
• Ato Quayson, Stanford University, United States
• Nathan Suhr-Systma, Emory University, United States
• Ann Elizabeth Willey, University of Louisville, United States

Interested in submitting to this journal? We recommend that you review the  About the Journal  page for the journal’s section policies, as well as the  Author Guidelines .

Authors may view the journal’s style guide and submit manuscripts for consideration via the journal’s online submissions portal . Registration for the site can be found  here . A tutorial for registering with the site can be found  here . Inquiries concerning manuscript submission should be directed to the editorial staff at  [email protected] .

Research in African Literatures (RAL) is dedicated to following best practices on ethical matters, errors, and retractions. The prevention of publication malpractice is one of the important responsibilities of the editorial board. Any kind of unethical behavior is unacceptable, and RAL does not tolerate plagiarism in any form. Authors submitting articles to RAL affirm that manuscript contents are original.

The following duties outlined for editors, authors, and reviewers are based on the AACE guidelines, which are in turn based on the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors. Editors, authors, and reviewers will also adhere to the AACE and SITE submission guideline policies.

Duties of Editor

Publication Decisions : Based on the review report of the external evaluators, the editor can accept, reject, or request modifications to the manuscript.

Review of Manuscripts : The editor must ensure that each manuscript is initially evaluated for originality. Following desk review, the manuscript will be sent out for blind peer review, which the editor will use to determine whether to accept, reject, or request revisions for the manuscript.

Fair Review : The editor must ensure that each manuscript received by RAL is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors.

Confidentiality : The editor must ensure that information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest : The editor of RAL will not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research without written consent of the author.

Duties of Authors

Reporting Standards : Authors should present an accurate account of their original research as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Manuscripts will follow the submission guidelines of the journal.

Originality : Authors must ensure that they have written entirely original work.

Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications : Authors should not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently. It is also expected that the author will not publish redundant manuscripts or manuscripts describing the same research in more than one journal.

Acknowledgement of Sources : Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have been influential in the research work.

Authorship of the Paper : Papers should include the names of all authors at the time of submission. Authors also ensure that all the co-authors have agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript and their inclusion of names.

Data Access and Retention : Authors should provide raw data related to their manuscript for editorial review and must retain such data.

Fundamental Errors in Published Works : If at any point of time, the author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in submitted manuscript, then the error or inaccuracy must be reported to the managing editor.

Duties of Reviewers

Confidentiality : Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information.

Acknowledgement of Sources : Manuscript reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research. The reviewer should notify the managing editor if the paper under consideration bears strong similarities to other published papers of which the reviewer has personal knowledge.

Standards of Objectivity : Review of submitted manuscripts must be done objectively and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Promptness : In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the managing editor, so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.

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• ISSN: 0034-5210
• e-ISSN: 1527-2044
• Frequency: quarterly
• First Issue: Volume 1, number 1 (1970)
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• Website:  Research in African Literatures

Research in African Literatures

Research in African Literatures , founded in 1970, is the premier journal of African literary studies worldwide and provides a forum in English for research on the oral and written literatures of Africa. In addition to thought-provoking essays, reviews of current scholarly books appear in every issue, often presented as critical essays, and a forum offers readers the opportunity to respond to issues raised in articles and book reviews. Thematic clusters of articles and frequent special issues reveal the broad interests of its readership.

Announcements

Call for papers: maryse condé (1934-2024): what is africa to me.

Special Issue of Research in African Literatures

In graduate school, while I was working as Research Assistant on Ambroise Kom’s Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires négro-africaines de langue française , 1970-1990 (Dictionary of Negro-African literary texts, 1970-1990), a proposal submitted by Robert Pageard stood out. This critic proposed to write an entry on Maryse Condé’s Segu , arguing that “l’auteur est certes guadeloupéenne mais cette œuvre paraît significante pour la littérature africaine” [the author is certainly Guadeloupean, but this novel seems significant for African literature]. Pageard’s argument was rejected without discussion. French anthropologist Anne-Marie Jeay, a reader of the same Segu , casts doubt on Maryse Condé as an authoritative voice capable of speaking about Africa. She introduces Condé as “Noire mais guadeloupéenne” [black but Guadeloupean]. She further claims that “comme s’il suffisait d’avoir la peau noire et quelque expérience de l’Afrique pour être capable d’écrire un roman historique se déroulant au Mali durant le XIXe siècle” [As if being black and having lived in Africa was enough to qualify one to write a historical novel set in Mali during the 19 th century]. Blackness was not enough to consecrate Maryse Condé as a credible speaker on Africa, if we were to believe Jeay.

Maryse Condé’s Segu —and this could be said to many of her works--ignites many controversies involving mostly the defense of entrenched presumptions (or assumptions) of literary frontiers and categories. Black, despite being Guadeloupean or Black, but Guadeloupean, these two stances call attention to Condé’s enduring engagement with the African continent, in her work and her personal biography. Condé, in typical fashion, does not provide stable and reassuring answers to these controversies. The title of the English translation of her last autobiography comes in the form of a question: “Maryse Condé: What Is Africa to Me?” The title comes from a passage in the book in which Condé challenges the exotic temptation (“le frisson douteux de l’exotisme” [the dubious thrill of exotism] that may drive the return of some to Africa: “What did Africa mean to these African American tourists? An exotic change of scenery from a harsh daily existence defined by racism and shackled by the slow progress of their civil rights?”

This special issue invites Condé’s readers to continue the conversation. Beyond what may be termed, for lack of a better expression, her African cycle ( Heremakhonon , A Season in Rihata , Segu , The Children of Segu ), Condé has continued to weave Africa in the black diasporic tapestry through novels such as The Last of the African Kings , History of the Cannibal Woman, Who Slashed Célanire’s Throat , The Fabulous and Sad Destiny of Ivan and Ivana , Waiting for the Waters to Rise . We invite contributions that may consider some of the following aspects:

• Maryse Condé and her African critics: controversies surrounding
• What Is Africa to Maryse Condé?
• African traces in Maryse Condé’s novels and thinking.
• Maryse Condé in conversation with African writers: Intertextual networks.
• Maryse Condé’s oeuvre in conversation with African orature.
• Africa in Maryse Condé’s global and diasporic tapestry

Send abstracts by August 1, 2024, to Cilas Kemedjio ([email protected]). After the submission stage, we anticipate that contributors will gather for a workshop (with advanced drafts of their papers) in the Spring of 2025.

African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, ed.

with Tejumola Olaniyan

This is the first anthology to bring together the key texts of African literary theory and criticism.

Brings together key texts that are otherwise hard to locate

Covers all genres and critical schools

Provides the intellectual context for understanding African literature

Facilitates the future development of African literary criticism

About the Author

Ato Quayson

Ato Quayson is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English and African and African American Studies. He studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Ghana and took his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, after which he held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford before returning to Cambridge to become Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literature in the Faculty of English from 1995-2005. He was also Director of the Centre for African Studies (1998-2005) and a Fellow of Pembroke College while at Cambridge (1995-2005). Prior to Stanford he was Professor of African and Postcolonial Literature at New York University (2017-2019) and Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto (2005-2017). In 2016 he was appointed University Professor at the University of Toronto, the highest distinction that the university can bestow. 

Professor Quayson has published 6 monographs and 10 edited volumes. His monographs include  Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing  (1997),  Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process?  (2000),  Calibrations: Reading for the Social  (2003), and  Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation  (2007).  Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism  (2014) was co-winner of the Urban History Association's 2015 Best Book Prize (non-North America) and was named in The Guardian as one of the 10 Best Books on Cities in 2014. His most recent book is  Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature  (Cambridge University Press, 2021), winner of the Warren-Brooks Prize in Literary Criticism for 2022. Edited volumes include  Relocating Postcolonialism  (with David Goldberg, 2001),  African Literary Theory: An Anthology of Literary Criticism and Theory  (with Tejumola Olaniyan, 2007),  Fathers and Daughters: An Anthology of Exploration  (2008),  Labor Migration, Human Trafficking, and Multinational Corporations , (with Antonela Arhin, 2012),  The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature , 2 volumes (2012),  A Companion to Diaspora and Transnational Studies  (with Girish Daswani, 2013),  The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel  (2016), The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature (with Jini Kim Watson, 2023),  and Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum (with Ankhi Mukherjee, 2023).  He also wrote a new Introduction and Notes to Nelson Mandela’s (2003). Works-in-progress include Accra Chic: A Locational History of Fashion in Accra (with Grace Tolequé; Intellect Books and Chicago University Press) and Exile and Diaspora in African Literature. 

He curates Critic.Reading.Writing, a YouTube channel on which he discusses various topics in literature, urban studies and the humanities in general: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjoidh_R_bJCnXyKBkytP_g  and is the host of Contours: The Cambridge Literary Studies Hour ( https://www.cambridge.org/core/browse-subjects/literature/contours-the-cambridge-literary-studies-hour ), where he holds dialogues with various scholars to address pressing issues, themes, and concepts in 21st century literary studies from medieval literature to the present day and from all areas of global literary studies from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Professor Quayson has served as President of the African Studies Association (2019-2020) and is an elected Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Royal Society of Canada (2013), the British Academy (2019), and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023).