D.1 – Venue: Loria 250
Where in World Literature is Africa?
Roundtable
Monica Popescu, McGill University (Chair)
Akin Adesokan, Indiana University, Bloomington
Susan Andrade, University of Pittsburgh
Kenneth Harrow, Michigan State University
Monica Popescu, McGill University
Bhakti Shringarpure, University of Connecticut
Gaurav Desai, University of Michigan (Discussant)
D.2 – Venue: 212 York, Room 106
Okey Ndibe and Life-Writing: Looking Igbos in the Eye with Okey Ndibe
Roundtable
Kalu Ogbaa, Southern Connecticut State University (Chair)
Don Burness, Franklin Pierce University
John Masterson, University of Sussex
Okey Ndibe, Writer
Kalu Ogbaa, Southern Connecticut State University
Catherine Onyemelukwe, Independent scholar & Writer
D.3 – Venue: Loria 351
Africans on the Moon: New Explorations in Science Fiction and Literature
Roundtable
with Guest Author: Deji Olukotun
Michael Kelleher (Chair)
Sponsored by the Traphagen Alumni Speakers Series, Yale College Office of Student Affairs
D.4 – Venue: 220 York, Room 001
Sickness and Health, Literature and Medicine
Panel
Babasinmisola Fadirepo, Louisiana State University (Chair)
Rosemary J. Jolly, Pennsylvania State University
“Illness Porn” and its Sub-Saharan African Narrative Resistors: Lessons in Fifth Wave Public Health Theory
H. Oby Okolocha, University of Benin
The Quotidian in Recent African Drama: The Quest to Cure “Africa’s Diseases” in Chinyere Grace Okafor’s The New Toyi Toyi
Cynthia Ward, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Fetishizing the “Z” Word
Emmanuel Yewah, Albion College
(Re)Imagining Medical Knowledge in African Literary Texts
D.5 – Venue: LC 211
African Films and Global Analytical Frameworks I
FVM: Film and Visual Media Caucus Panel 1 of 2
P. Julie Papaioannou, University of Rochester (Chair)
Matthew H. Brown, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Nigerian Television at the Gates: Segun Olusola and the Periliberal World Order
Moradewun Adejunmobi, University of California, Davis
Locating African Film and Television Cultures: Local, World, and Transnational
Olivier J. Tchouaffe, Southwestern University
Revisiting Bamako (2006): Thoughts on Academic Production in Authoritarian and Precarious Contexts
Jean Ouédraogo, College of the Holy Cross (Discussant)
D.6 – Venue: Loria B51
Life-Writing from Africa to the World: Relationality, Embodiment, and the Counter-Canonical
Panel
Kanika Batra, Loyola University Chicago (Chair)
Ketu Katrak, University of California, Irvine
The Political is the Personal: South African Indian Jay Pather’s Selected Performance Works
Sonja Darlington, Beloit College
How Place Affects the Traveller: Noo Sarwo-Wiwa’s Relational Shifts around Nigeria, the Black Body, and Literature
Kanika Batra, Texas Tech University
Writing Black, Writing Back: Time, Space, Whiteness, and Academic Relationality
D.7 – Venue: 212 York 04A
Africa, Diaspora, and Afro-Futures: Emerging Paradigms/Debates
Panel
Samantha Pinto, Georgetown University (Chair)
Anne Gulick, University of South Carolina
Decolonial Critical Pedagogy
Christopher Okonkwo, University of Missouri, Columbia
Make Umuofia Great Again!: Rereading Things Fall Apart’s Okonkwo in the Age of Trump
Matthew Omelsky, Duke University
Toward an African Fugitivity: Expanding the Scope of the “New Black Studies”
Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi, Western University
Black Thanatopoetics? Death, Dying, and Diaspora Opacity
D.8 – Venue: LC 105
Saharan Identities in Music and Literature
Panel 1 of Seminar
Kevin Hickey, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (Chair)
Sophia Azeb, New York University
Performing Africanité: African Cultural Festivals and the Saharan Quandary
Mohamed Ghousmane, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Folklore and Performance in the songs of kel Ewey Tuareg of Aïr (Niger)
Mark Drury, Queens College CUNY
Temporalities of Disjuncture: Memoire and Memories of 1970s Decolonization in the Sahara
D.9 – Venue: 212 York, Room 004
Relation and Glissantian Poetics
Panel
Renée Larrier, Rutgers University (Chair)
Gabriel Bamgbose, Rutgers University
Questions of the Archive and Memory in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnificent
Kathleen Ellis, Rutgers University
“I am coming to your waterfall:” Nature, History, and the Individual in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones
Georgette Mitchell, Rutgers University
The (Ante)Islands: Avalasse and its Soluble (A)verse in Franco-Caribbean Poetics
D.10 – Venue: Loria B50
African Feminism in Twenty-First-Century World Politics
WOCALA: Women’s Caucus Panel 2 of 2
Ada Uzoamaka Azodo, Indiana University Northwest (Chair)
Rose A. Sackeyfio, Winston Salem State University
Making War on Women: Sexual Abuse and Violence in Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail and On Black Sisters’ Street by Chika Unigwe
P. Jane Splawn, Livingstone College
Gendered Violence in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names
Ada Uzoamaka Azodo, Indiana University Northwest
Gender and Global Politics Today
D.11 – Venue: LC 104
Ernest Cole’s Space and Trauma in the Writing of Aminatta Forna
Roundtable
Eustace Palmer (Chair)
Eustace Palmer, Georgia College and State University
Oumar Cherif Diop, Kennesaw State University
Mohamed Kamara, Washington and Lee University
Abioseh Porter, Drexel University
Ernest Cole, Hope College (respondent)
Book launch, Weds 14 June 9:30pm
Ernest Cole, Space and Trauma in the Writings of Aminatta Forna at the Africa World Press Bookstall in the Booksellers’ Area, Afro-American Cultural Center
D.12 – Venue: LC 205
Economies of Gender in Film & Literature
Micheline Rice-Maximin, Swarthmore College (Chair)
Tama Hamilton-Wray, Michigan State University
Exilic Visions of Home: Crossing Borders in Search of Father, Mother, and Self in African Diasporic Films
Cherie Maiden, Furman University
African Women and Womanhood in Léonora Miano’s Crépuscule du tourment
Anenechukwu Kevin Amoke, Lancaster University
Bodies, Borders, and Capital in a Transnational Sex Work Economy: Reflections on Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon
James Arnett, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
The Market In/And African Literature: Amma Darko’s Information Economies
D.13 – Venue: LC 206
Masculinities
Panel
Uchechukwu Umezurike, University of Alberta (Chair)
Uchechukwu Umezurike, University of Alberta
Unquenched Desire: Masculinity in Nigerian Popular Fiction
Cecil Tengatenga, Yale University
Gender, Sexuality and Health: Deconstructing Masculinity in Africa
Matthew Drollette, University of Wyoming
An Argument against Ethnographically Interpreting Masculinity in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
Chinwe Ezeifeka, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Akwa
Patriarchal Legitimization Strategies in Igbo Gender-Related Taboos: A Case for Critical Discourse Analysis
D.14 – Venue: Loria 360
Urban Hybrid Languages
Panel
Peter Vakunta, University of Indianapolis (Chair)
Wangui Wa Goro, Translator/Translation Theorist and Promoter: SIDENSI
Re(w)riting Empires through Literary Translation? A Review of the Last 50 Years
Olabode Ibironke, Rutgers University
Publishing Translations
Peter Vakunta, University of Indianapolis
The Metrolingua Francas of Urban Youth in Africa
Hanan Aly, Michigan State University
Beyond Postcoloniality: Beur Identities in Mehdi Charef’s Tea in the Harem (1983) and Azouz Begag’s Shanytown Kid (1986)
D.15 – Venue: LC 208
Post-Apartheid Art Worlds
Panel 1 of 2
Jill Planche, Brock University (Chair)
Andrew van der Vlies, Queen Mary University of London
Stasis Anxieties: Time, Capital, and Conflict in Some Contemporary South African Fictions
Erin Schwartz, Wenzhou-Kean University
Migrant Signifiers: Immigrants, Refugees, and Regaining Place in the Art Work of Berni Searle
Jill Planche, Brock University
Intermezzo: “An instant of human existence:” Amy Jephta’s Kristalvlakte seen through Gilles Deleuze’s Concept of the “Minor”
Mandisa Haarhoff, University of Florida
Between Pessimism and Optimism: Post-apartheid Blackness in South African Literature
D.16 – Venue: LC 317
Les Maquisards prennent la parole. It’s the Outlaw’s Turn to Speak!
Panel
Cilas Kemedjio, University of Rochester & Gilbert Doho, Case Western Reserve University (Chairs)
Roger Fopa Kuete, Université de Maroua, Cameroun
L’esthétique de la résistance dans L’œuvre de Gilbert Doho
Cilas Kemedjio, University of Rochester
La mémoire amputée: conversations post-mortem entre La Mémoire amputée de Were Were Liking et Une Feuille dans le vent de Jean-Marie Teno
Gilbert Doho, Case Western Reserve University
Femmes, maquis et guerre de libération au Cameroun: Singue Mura et La Mémoire amputée ou devoir de mémoire envers les maquisardes: Essai d’approche matriarcale de l’Afrique contemporaine
Albert Jiatsa, Université de Maroua
Entre fictionnalisation des figures historiques et devoir de mémoire : Monseigneur Albert Ndongmo et Ernest Ouandié dans Main basse sur le Cameroun de Mongo Beti
Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, North Carolina State University (President of ALA, discussant)