Two ideologically divergent schools of thought have emerged in the study of Zambian
 literature in English. The first one rooted in imperialist doctrines emerged in the early 1980s
 and continues to influence many studies on Zambian literature to this day. The second one
 with a clear object of the renaissance of world literatures like that of Zambia is recent.
 It begun towards the end of the second decade of the 2000s and challenges the first one.
 This paper gives a critical discussion of studies that constitute and mark these two trends.
 It is a desktop research that employs the documental analysis informed by the historical
 cultural materialism theory. It concludes that the imperialist school of thought overlook
 and impoverish our understanding of the wider ideological and political context in which
 Zambian literature in English has and is evolving and the world literary scene on which we
 encounter it. Then, the renaissance school of thought does not just remedy this ideological
 problem but creates an opportunity for us to study Zambian literature in English as a distinct
 local realist tradition that is organically developing and in transition.