Session D

Thursday, June 15, 2017 - 10:30am to 12:00pm

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)