Snapshot

Novian Whitsitt is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and English.   A PhD from Wisconsin-Madison, Novian wrote his dissertation on popular fiction by Muslim women written in Hausa, one of the Nigerian languages.  Now he’s publishing in top journals in his field.  Particularly interested in gender analysis of African, Caribbean, and African-American literature, Novian has served as Director of Women’s Studies at Luther.  A thoughtful man, he has the ready smile and the athleticism to keep up with three elementary school children:  Novian is a former basketballer for Stanford and our own prize-winning competitive biker:  none of us can keep up with him, in more ways than one.

Research Interests

Having only finished my dissertation a few years ago, I'm still passionately involved with the project. My specific African language interest has been Hausa, a language spoken in northern Nigerian, southern Niger, and various parts of west and central Africa. So my research was conducted in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, an ancient site known for its early Islamic roots.

I became fascinated with a body of Hausa popular literature while participating in an intensive language program during the summer of 1994. Four years later, I would return and undertake a systematic look at the literature, attempting to gage how the short novels were effecting the social, cultural, and religious attitudes of the readers.

Thus, my time was spent discovering the most celebrated writers, reading their works, and interviewing them and their readers. My analysis led me to believe that the books, which spent a majority of their time addressing concerns about the role and place of women in society, were truly suggesting some potentially radical alterations in the social and gender norms.

Thoughts about Teaching:

My time at Luther has been divided between the 1st-year core class, Paideia I, and other literature courses. I have had the wonderful freedom of being able to teach what I know, that being literature of the African diaspora. "Literature of the African Peoples," "Caribbean Women Writers," and "The Autobiography in the African Diaspora" are some of the courses that I regularly teach.

I also teach "Stories of Place", which typically favors an Africanist emphasis. In many ways, I feel privileged in being able to teach African, Caribbean, and Afro-American literature, given that many colleges do not make room for it within their literary curriculum. But I also feel that Luther students are privileged themselves in being able to discover that literature and "English" literature goes far beyond the bounds of the traditional western literary perception. Our students leave the college with a more encompassing perspective of the make-up of an English department.  View Novian Whitsitt's spotlight video on teaching and learning.

Writing Sample:

Below is an excerpt from an article accepted in the journal Research in African Literature, entitled "Islamic-Hausa Feminism and Popular Hausa Romance: Qur'anic Re-interpretation in the Works of Balaraba Ramat Yakubu."

In the urban areas of northern Nigeria, a burgeoning corpus of contemporary Hausa popular literature has captured the attention and concern of the entire Hausa community. The literature can be found in the cities of Kano, Zariya, Kaduna, Katsina, and Sokoto, but given that the majority of the books are written and sold in Kano, the literature's English moniker has been dubbed Kano market literature.

Avid readers have little difficulty in locating booksellers who have strategically positioned themselves in the midst of every potential direction of foot-traffic. Sidewalk displays, market stalls, and independent book kiosks dizzy onlookers with hundreds of appealing book covers of youthful couples acting out different love-interest scenes.

Currently, this genre of popular romance fiction, known to Hausa speakers as Littattafan Soyayya (books of love), enjoys huge popularity as interested parties voraciously devour books and await the soon-to-be-published works of their favorite writers.

The popularity of Kano market literature rests firmly upon its subject matter, one that has proven quite controversial within the conservative Muslim environment of Hausa society. As expected from any work of romantic pulp fiction, Soyayya novels pre-occupy themselves with sagas of love and marital relationships.

Some writers depict the ordeals faced by courting lovers whose aspirations of marriage are continuously frustrated by meddlesome family members or uncooperative parents, and others explore the challenges of maintaining healthy relationships in the aftermath of matrimony.

In either case, writers address the reality of Hausa youth confronting dramatic social change in an era when traditional mores must negotiate the onslaught of contemporary sensibilities. The swirl of cultural pluralism has generated consternation over the conventional practices of gender relations, and Kano market literature situates itself at the core of this discussion.

The romantic novels have become an explorative forum for the socially and culturally loaded issues of polygamy, marriages of coercion, purdah (the Islamic tradition of seclusion), and accessibility of education for females. As a result, the literature indirectly and candidly questions the gender status quo and works to modify the social, familial, and educational position of Hausa women.

Public opinion harshly criticizes the literature for allegedly corrupting the minds of the youth, especially young women. Much of the response is based on hearsay, as most people have only familiarized themselves with the literature through word of mouth.

Common belief holds that most books are read by female youth in secondary schools and that the vast majority of the works have prompted moral decay. Critics contend the romantic stories promote sexual promiscuity and the encouragement of youthful disobedience of parental desires in conjugal affairs.

Others maintain that the literature is so riddled with so-called Western notions of love that it no longer reflects any modicum of Hausa tradition. For such critics, the swift banning or brusque censoring presents the best solution to the problem.

Contrary to public perception, all Soyayya writers assert that the novels are created with the ultimate intention of instilling proper moral behavior among the reading constituency; and as they contend, the didactic intentions of their stories are unmistakable. In order to clarify their ethical agendas, numerous writers include prefaces that unequivocally explicate the thematic direction and instructive nature of various novels. Writers, without exception, feel a sense of social responsibility in advising a youth confused by the volatile social climate.

Readers confirm that the literature has had the desired effect, claiming that the books are beneficial on several levels. In their estimation, Soyayya novels possess the dual attributes of entertainment and instruction. Readers can experience an array of pleasurable fantasies while remaining conscious of the fact that the romantic trope of stories is a vehicle for the social concerns of writers. Books become thematic commentaries on the place of auren dole (forced marriage), auren mata biyu (polygamy), purdah (female seclusion), and ilimin mata (women's education) in contemporary Hausa society.

Both male and female writers address the issues of gender relations, but women writers have understandably proven more committed to communicating the female perspectives and concerns. Women writers and readers maintain that though male-authored texts concur with the general literary sentiment of female empowerment, they too frequently privilege the masculine emotional response and fail to explore the psychological reactions of women regarding the problematic institutions of forced marriage and polygamy.

Speaking from first-hand experience, female writers imagine heroines who must navigate their way through conservative familial politics in order to secure their aspirations of marital choice or educational improvement. Other female protagonists encounter the emotional adversity inherent in co-wife relations due to a husband's ineffectualness in executing unbiased treatment.

Hausa women writers are undeniably feminist, in the sense that they possess an awareness of the constraints placed upon women because of their gender and a desire to dislodge these constraints, thus creating a more equitable gender system.

The single most important consideration in the construction of Hausa feminism is the significance of Islam, given that the religious faith colors virtually every aspect of social relations. Writers have attempted to negotiate the tensions between cultural/religious tradition and the elements of modernization by identifying themselves as Muslim writers who do not see these forces as incompatible entities.

Regardless of the religious veracity of their claims, writers have been condemned as espousing un-Islamic teachings when condemning forced marriage, discouraging polygamy, or encouraging women to further their education at the expense of the tradition of seclusion.

The Islamic legalistic notion of ijtihad, the historically-accepted practice of reinterpreting the Qur'anic philosophy on human relations based on the political, educational, cultural, and economic norms of a specific era, offers insight into some of the varying religious perspectives of Soyayya writers.

The assumption of those not well versed in the origin and development of the Shari'a (formal Islamic law) maintains that it is totally divine and immutable in form, and such a view is often encouraged by a conservative class of religious clerics (Engineer 1992, 6). In truth, the Shari'a never came into being instantaneously but went through an agonizing process of evolution. Its configuration never remained static as well; even after it assumed a recognizable shape, jurists employed the principle of ijtihad (literally "exertion"), meaning individual creative interpretation of the scripture and the application of legal reform (Stowasser 1998, 34).

The implementation of ijtihad in the early Islamic community constituted the dynamic element of Islamic law, but its admittance was barred after the decline of the Abbasid empire in the 12th century (Engineer 1992, 6). The formulated Shari'a then reflected an inert and perpetual quality.

In the religious spirit of ijtihad, Hausa female writers have sought to alter cultural interpretations of certain Qur'anic codes of behavior. Thus writers insist that the call for social change and female empowerment occurs within the sanctions of Islamic doctrine. The range of the figurative ijtihad offered by Soyayya women writers reflects a wide variety of social criticism on the gender-sensitive subjects.

A few have assumed a conservative view, voicing concern for the welfare of women while simultaneously preserving their attachment to traditional Islamic thought and cultural conventions. Such writers support the existence of auren dole, seeing it as institution that should fall within the bounds of parental jurisdiction. Writers of this traditional ilk often defend polygamy as a religious establishment and thus offer advice to women on how to cope with the emotional turmoil stemming from such circumstances.

The conservative ijtihad within the Soyayya novels limits itself to the championing of female education and the abatement of purdah restrictions, both social features that can be notably connected with the "Golden Age" of the first Islamic community and the era of the Prophet. By summoning the social spirit of the Golden Age, cautious writers can portray themselves as "fundamentalists" while encouraging greater social mobility for females.