J.1 – Venue: Loria B51
Blogging African Arts and Literature
Roundtable
Aaron Bady (Chair)
Aaron Bady, Zunguzungu
https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/about/
Ainehi Edoro, Marquette University, Brittle Paper
http://brittlepaper.com/tag/ainehi-edoro/
Rebecca Jones, University of Birmingham, Kate Haines Wallis, University of Bristol & Stephanie Bosch Santana, University of California at Los Angeles, Africa in Words
https://africainwords.com/
J.2 – Venue: 212 York, Room 004
Women, Ethics, Islam
EC-sponsored Book Review Panel
Kenneth Harrow, Michigan State University (Chair)
Kenneth Harrow, Michigan State University
On Suzanne Gauch’s Maghrebs in Motion: North African Cinema in Nine Movements (Oxford UP, 2016)
P. Julie Papaioannou, University of Rochester
On Brigitte Weltman-Aron’s Algerian Imprints: Ethical Space in the Work of Assia Djebar and Helene Cixous (Columbia UP, 2015)
Gabeba Baderoon, Pennsylvania State University
On Shirin Edwin’s Privately Empowered: Expressing Feminism in Islam in Norther Nigerian Fiction (Northwestern UP, 2016)
J.3 – Venue: 212 York, Room 106
The Cinematic City: Desire, Form, and the African Urban: Questions of Genre
Panel 2 of 2
Polo Moji, University of the Witswatersrand (Chair)
Timothy Wright, University of Johannesburg
Ruined Time and Post-Revolutionary Allegory in Johannesburg Films of Youth
Natasha Himmelman, University of Johannesburg
(Re)Translating Carmen: Palimpsestic (Con)texts and Aesthetics
Danai S. Mupotsa, University of the Witswatersrand
Fairy Tale Fantasy
Polo Moji, University of the Witswatersrand
Black (2015) or Off Limits? The “Hood” Film and Francophone Afropean Urban
J.4 – Venue: 220 York, Room 001
Christopher Okigbo: A Retrospective
Roundtable
Obi Nwakanma, University of Central Florida (Chair)
Chielozona Eze, Northeastern Illinois University
The Legacy of Christopher Okigbo and the Challenges of Rethinking African Poetry
Obi Nwakanma, University of Central Florida, Orlando
Elegiac Okigbo: Dimensions of Melancholy in the Poetry of Christopher Okigbo
J.5 – Venue: 212 York, Room 04A
New Pedagogies for Embedding African Literatures in the Lower-Division Classroom
Panel
Laura Chrisman, University of Washington (Chair)
Steph Hankinson, University of Washington
African Short Stories in the Writing-Focused Classroom
Erik Jaccard, University of Washington
“By the end of this course, you will be able to…:” African Literature in the Outcome-Focused Writing Classroom
Liz Janssen, University of Washington
Teaching Politics of Reading with African Literature
J.6 – Venue: Loria B50
Ken Saro-Wiwa: Writing World Literatures
Panel
Nimanthi Rajasingham, Colgate University (Chair)
Brendon Nicholls, University of Leeds
Environment, Psyche, Objects: Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy
Judy Kendall, University of Salford
The Politics of Linguistic Innovation in Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy
Alexander Fyfe, Pennsylvania State University
The Textual Politics of the Land in the Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa
Matthew Lecznar, University of Sussex
“We All Stand Before History:” (Re)Locating Saro-Wiwa in the Biafran War Canon
Nimanthi Rajasingham, Colgate University
“War is Work”: Neoliberalism and Ethnic War in Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy
J.7 – Venue: LC 104
Conflict in Congo
Katherine Tidmarsh, Université Paris Diderot (Paris 7) (Chair)
Janice Spleth, West Virginia University
Gender, Trauma, and Resilience in Amba Bongo’s Une femme en exil
Sarah Arens, University of Edinburgh
A Grotesque Body Politic? Space, Gender, and Nationalism in Congolese Writing
Tyler McNally, Kennesaw State University
A Postcolonial Representation of Power: Sony Labou Tansi’s Life and a Half
Scott Newman, Northwestern University
“In search of the world and of things:” Heidegger’s Notion of Worlding and Sony Labou Tansi
J.8 – Venue: LC 206
Hybridity and Transnationalism
Xiaoran Hu, Queen Mary, University of London (Chair)
Jacques Manangama Duki, National Pedagogical University of Kinshasa
Essential Characteristics of Langston Hughes’ Poetry and Their Impact on the Congolese Conscience
Xiaoran Hu, Queen Mary, University of London
China in the African Imaginary and the Problems of Solidarity
Safiya Ismaila, University of Abuja
Evolving Cultures, Literary Revolution and Global Changes in African Literature: Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s Season of Crimson Blossoms, Fatima Alkali’s Personal Angle, and Beatrice Lamwaka’s Butterfly Dreams and Other Stories
J.9 – Venue: Loria 360
Histories of Print, 1850-1950
Charles Riley, Yale University (Chair)
Tom Olali, University of Nairobi
A Critical Exposition of Jihad Trope as a Religious Philosophy in the Epic of Rasi’l Ghuli (1850-1855)
Adrien Pouille, Wabash College
Mobility in François Equilbecq’s Essai sur la littérature merveilleuse des noirs (1913) and Bérenger-Féraud’s Contes de la Sénégambie (1885)
Steward Van Wyk, University of the Western Cape
!Nanseb of the Khoweisen: Literary Representations of Hendrik Witbooi
Patricia G. Clark, Westminster College
“Easy English” in 1940s South Africa
J.10 – Venue: LC 317
Rethinking the National
Unionmwan Edebiri, University of Benin (Chair)
Melissa Myambo, University of Johannesburg
Rethinking (National) Borders and Cultural Distance in an Unevenly Developed Globalscape
Unionmwan Edebiri, University of Benin
Bernard Dadié: From Négritude to Social Criticism
Edoama Odueme, University of Lagos
Global Mobility and National Identity in Chimdi Maduagwu’s Reverberations Abroad
Rebecca Fasselt, University of Pretoria
Shifting Nervous Conditions: Intertextual Repositionings of Gendered and National Subjectivities in Kopano Matlwa’s Period Pain
J.11 – Venue: LC 211
Writing Trauma and Violence Against Women
Irmagard Langmia, Anne Arundel Community College (Chair)
Irmagard Langmia, Anne Arundel Community College
Re-imagining Female Genital Mutilation in Africa and the Conflicts that Shape its Discourse in 21st-Century World Politics and Global Geographies in Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die
Ifeyinwa Okolo, Federal University Lokoja
Surviving the Trauma of Rape in Yvonne Vera’s Without a Name and Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
Alison Data Phido, African Radio Drama Association
Women at War: The Ways that Mothers and Daughters Navigate Chaos and Mayhem during Wartime
J.12 – Venue: LC 210
Gender/Sexuality, Migration, and Literature
Panel
Anna Hill, Yale University (Chair)
Shane McCoy, University of Washington
Shuttling Between Diasporas: African Women Writers Re-Imagining the “New” African Diaspora
F. Delali Kumavie, Northwestern University
On Beginnings and Continuations: Airports, National Anxieties and Transnational Women in Transit
Naminata Diabate, Cornell University
Maps of Neoliberal Sexualities in Africa
J.13 – Venue: LC 105
Case Studies in African Language Literature and Translation
Uhuru Portia Phalafala, Stellenbosch University (Chair)
El-Shaddai Deva, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
The African Writer as Glocalizing Translator: A Case Study on Ferdinand Oyono
Zaahida Nabagereka, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
Luganda Literature Producers in Kampala: New Ways of Engaging with Audiences
Uhuru Portia Phalafala, Stellenbosch University
“Crossing Borders Without Leaving:” Translations of Tswana Vernaculars and Aesthetics in Keorapetse Kgositsile’s Diasporic Poetic
J.14 – Venue: Loria 351
New Frames for African Literature
Panel 1 of 2
Elzbieta Binczycka, Jagiellonian University (Chair)
Nicole Cesare, Franklin & Marshall College
Post-Independence African Fiction and the Production of Place
Ama Bemma Adwetewa-Badu, Clark University
Vanguard Africa: The Fight for an African Avant-Garde
Elzbieta Binczycka, Jagiellonian University
Black Icarus? Comparative literature and the Flying Africans Myth
Thulani Mkhize, Rhodes University
Context is Everything: The Case for an African Literary Theory
J.15 – Venue: LC 318
Marking/Making Changes in African Literature
Vincent Odamtten, Hamilton College (Chair)
Amanda Lagji, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The “Fundamentals” of World Literature: The Silent Minaret and Post-9/11 Global Forms
Vincent Odamtten, Hamilton College
Literature as the Miner’s Canary: The Three Books of Shama by Benjamin Kwakye
Aaron Eastley, Brigham Young University
Achebe Among the Moderns?
A. B. C. Duruaku, Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri, and Chioma Toni-Duruaku, Federal Polytechnic Nekede Owerri
Fiction and the Challenge of an Urban Culture in Nigeria: A Template for Re-Invigorating the African Story