African Literature University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Overview

The Master of African Literature offered at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg  is a programme for those wishing to specialise in African Literature in English. The course is concerned with the intellectual place of Africa in the world and examines black intellectual traditions across the continent and the diaspora.

Key facts

African Literature at Wits is the only department of its kind in South Africa and has, over the past three decades, produced high calibre graduates who have gone into research, publishing, journalism, creative writing and academic careers.

It examines a wide range of African cultural forms, their transmission and their transversal of geographic, cultural, political and disciplinary boundaries.

Staff members offer courses which explore critical, theoretical, and historical issues, as well as problems of representation in the broadest sense.

This kind of approach expands the field of literature to include a wide range of cultural practices from canonical texts of African writing to artefacts of visual and popular culture, revealing the role literature in its broadest sense plays as a form of exchange and expression. Our commitment to high quality is reflected in one of the highest rates of postgraduate student research publication among literature departments in the country.