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Podcast: New Books in Literary Studies
Episode: Katherine Hallemeier, "African Literature and US Empire: Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Description: African Literature and US Empire Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing (Edinburgh UP, 2024) demonstrates how African literature grapples with the enforced optimism of US empire that circulates in postcolonial nations:
Unsettles chronologies that chart a growing disillusionment with the postcolonial nation and national development across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Brings together African literary studies, affect studies, and U.S. empire studies
Diagnoses and critiques how U.S. empire is sustained through cycles of optimism and disappointment
Includes chapters on both classic postcolonial fiction by writers such as Buchi Emecheta and Miriam Tlali and recent anglophone Af...