Emma Dabiri

New Literary Courses and the Return of Disobedient Bodies Book Club

Added 2022-02-15 21:30:47 +0000 UTC

Hello everybody

I wanted to pick up more regular communication again, now that I’m more settled, and increasingly feel like sharing less and less of my thoughts and ideas on social media, particularly Twitter.

I’m in the US at the moment, where I have been appointed to a position called the Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies. As part of my role I am teaching a couple of comparative literature courses. The first is writing creative non-fiction for change, while the second is looking two separate but related literary movements. I teach literature from both the Irish Literary Revival and the Harlem Renaissance, exploring the surprising relationship between Irish writers reimagining an Irish literary consciousness in English, and Harlem Renaissance writers who were establishing a black literary movement in Harlem shortly afterwards.

The debates around language, use of dialects and vernaculars that were stigmatised by the dominant powers, and how best to represent peoples who were stereotyped and lampooned as stupid and barbaric, whether through through social realism or attempts at representing “respectability”? are some of the issues we explore.

A few people have asked me to share more information on the courses and reading lists etc on social media but I’m aware that some of you aren’t on IG for instance so I would rather share here.

I am also keen to get the Disobedient Bodies book club up and running again and wanted to share that with you all first.

The two books I’m trying to decide between for the first session in April are either :

Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/602237/constructing-a-nervous-system-by-margo-jefferson/

Or//

Get Rich or Lie Trying https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/get-rich-or-lie-trying/ Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy by Symeon Brown, both of which are hotly anticipated 2022 titles.

They are both very different to each other and whichever one we do first, I will probably follow up with the other, but do let me know which you would prefer as we welcome back D.O.