This fall, the university will offer a new course, which is an overview of African women’s fiction.
The course will be taught by Rebekah Whitley, who is new to the Ole Miss family. She expressed her excitement about teaching a class focused on the specific texts that will be used in this course describing them as beautiful, powerful and important.
“Students should take this class if they are curious about Africa or passionate about reading,” Whitley said. “Students who take this class should also be wanting to challenge themselves. It’s not a class that will be right for everyone, and students need to know that the material is very raw and real and can be deeply upsetting at times — just like life. But I do hope the course attracts some great students. It will make (students) think deeply, feel deeply and grow a lot.”
Whitley said all students from different backgrounds and walks of life will be respected and welcomed in this class.
For the next two years, Whitley will be a Barksdale Fellow in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, where she will be teaching honors 101, but each semester she will teach a course on the topic of her choosing. Whitley stated she wanted to teach this course because it was the heart of her graduate research. Whitley studied in England at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for West African Studies on a Marshall Scholarship.
“In this class students will read, write about and discuss writing by African women of all skin colors and varied cultural backgrounds, who live or lived most of their lives in Africa from the 1960s through today,” Whitley said.
Whitley said while there are many classes at Ole Miss that teach about African literature, none of them focus specifically on works written by African women.
“It seems like now would be a great time to shine some light on those dimensions of the writing that’s available out there,” Whitley said. “There’s a lot of great writing out there that barely gets read by Americans because they just don’t know it exists. Society will always benefit from our considering the diverse range of stories that reflect our shared human experience, in all of its complexities.”
The texts that Whitley will be discussing in her class will feature aspects such as racism, spousal and child abuse, rape, prostitution and murder, among other topics. “Women at Point Zero,” “The Book of Not” and “Butterfly Burning” are a few reading assignments that students will learn about in this course. Students will also explore short stories from female writers from countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Uganda and others.
The most exciting part about this course for Whitley is seeing what her students bring to the table. She is curious as to what preexisting knowledge, feelings, imagining, biases, beliefs and life experiences students will bring to class discussions.
“I don’t believe that students just come to a text or to a class and get the meaning of it — as if it is already there and will always be the same for everyone,” she said.
Whitley hopes that every student who takes this class will walk away with a better understanding of everyday life and what it is like for different people in this world.
“I hope that students who take this class will walk away with better reading, writing and speaking skills, but also with an expanded notion of what day-to-day life is like for other people in our world, a better understanding of wherein we are all different and the same,” Whitley said.
Whitley also hopes this course will have an impact on students.
“I hope this course hits students in the gut and allows them to experience moments of intense beauty and intense pain which, taken together, will hopefully stir students’ passions for further self-development and social change.”
