ALA Conference Program

Wednesday, April 15 - Sunday, April 19

Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday

An Evening of Poetry in Memoriam

Print Conference Program (pdf form)

---

Wednesday, April 15

Noon – 7:00 PM: Registration

Location: Diamond Foyer – Sheraton Hotel

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM: Film Screening

Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Victor Anicet, céramiste et artiste martiniquais

3:00 PM – 4:45 PM: Concurrent Sessions (A)

A1: A Historiography of Privilege: Deconstructing Racial Philosophy and the Legacy of Law
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Nubia Kai

Nubia Kai, Howard University
Blackness in the Ancient World (Egypt and India)

Sani Adamou, The University of Texas at Austin
The Amazons of Dahomey: Myth or Reality

Tcho Mbaimba Caulker, University of New Haven
The African Institution of London, the Colonial Library, and the Categorization of Africa in the Long Eighteenth Century

Touria Khannous, Louisiana State Univerisity
The Representation of Blackness in Classical Arabic Literature

 

A2: ROUNDTABLE: Africa and Blackness in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean Scenes from Gem of the Ocean
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Yvonne Singh

Yvonne Singh, TheaterATL/International - Alliance Theater
Sandra Richards, Northwestern University
Michelle Shay, Tony-nominated Actor and Director
Jade Lambert Smith, Alliance Theatre and Spelman College

 

A3: Africa and Blackness in Western Films
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Sarah Nilsen

Sarah Nilsen, University of Vermont
White Soul: The Magical Negro in the Films of Stephen King

Bernard A. Oniwe, University of South Carolina
Blackness, Badness, Backwardness: The Disturbing Black Identity in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of A Nation

Z'étoile Imma, University of Virginia
Reinventing Africa? Shifting Significations of Blackness in Contemporary Independent Films The Visitor and In America

 

A4: Africa and Blackness in World Literature and Visual Arts
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Alessandra Capperdoni

Alessandra Capperdoni, Simon Fraser University
Fluid Borders - Solid Seas: Representing Africa in Italy

Olabisi Titilope Gwamma, Southeastern Community College
It is a World of Whorls and Whirls: the Dizzying Vision of Nike Davies, Nigeria’s Prolific Artist

Cal Woodruff, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Violent Male Homo-Eroticism and the Harem: A Lacanian Look at 19th Century French & British Orientalist Painting

 

A5: Africa in Immigrant Writers’ Literature
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Rita Nnodim

Rita Nnodim, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Territory, Cultural Space, and Identity: Literary Imaginings of Africa in African Immigrant Writers' Literature

Monica Popescu, McGill University
From Budapest with Love: Seeing South Africa from the Eastern Bloc

Judith Miller, New York University
“Africa" in Transnational Francophone African Playwrights

Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure, University of Northern Iowa
Gil Courtemanche's Colonial Desire and Diseased Eyes on the Rwandan Genocide in Un dimanche à la piscine de Kigali/A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali

 

A6: African and African Diaspora Writings: A Comparative Perspective
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Keguro Macharia

Keguro Macharia, University of Maryland, College Park
Intimate Diasporas in Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters

Frans Weiser, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The Success of Crippling Failure: Mysterious Narrative Strategies within Couto’s Terra Sonâmbula and Thiong'o’s Petals of Blood

Onyemaechi Udumukwu, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Postmodernity, Black Subjectivity, and the Contemporary African American  Novel: Wideman and Macmillan

David Agum, Temple University, PA
Fear and the Conceptualization of  “Okonkwo” and “Bigger” in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Richard Wright’s Native Son

 

A7: Subversive Inscriptions: Rethinking Eurocentric Aesthetics in Contemporary Visual and Performance Arts
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Candace Keller

Candace Keller, Michigan State University
Postcoloniality and Artistic Agency in Recent Photographs by Malick Sidibé

Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Our Cyclop Umma: Tunisia’s Postcolonial Nightmare through the Peinture Folie of Moncef Ben Amor

Carrie Walker, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Hip Hop Diaspora: Visual Representations of Africa in the 21st Century

 

A8: ROUNDTABLE: Preparing for Promotion and Tenure:  Junior Faculty Survival Workshop (ALA EXECUTIVE COUNCIL PANEL)
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Abioseh Michael Porter

Abioseh Michael Porter, Drexel University
Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah, Western Illinois University
Oty Agbajoh-Laoye, Monmouth University, New Jersey
Anthonia Kalu, The Ohio State University
Kenneth W. Harrow, Michigan State University

5:00 PM – 7:20 PM: Opening Reception and Lecture

Location: The Grand Maple Ballroom at the Davis Center – The University of Vermont

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Reception - Music by Alhaji Papa Susso, Griot
6:00 PM – 6:10 PM: Introduction by Lokangaka Losambe, Chair of the English Department, University of Vermont and ALA Convener
6:10 PM – 6:20 PM: Welcome Address by Daniel Mark Fogel, University of Vermont President
6:20 PM – 7:10 PM: Keynote Address by Wole Soyinka – “The Creative Pursuit in Global Times”
7:10 PM – 7:20 PM: Vote of Thanks by Maureen N. Eke, ALA President

NOTE: Shuttle buses provided at the Sheraton’s Conference Center to the Davis Center (Continuous loop from 4:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.)

8:00 PM – 9:30 PM: Film Screening

Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Who’s Afraid of Ngugi?

8:00 PM - 10:00 PM: WOCALA Business Meeting

Location: Diamond Ballroom - Sheraton Hotel

8:00 PM - 10:00 PM: Special Presentation: Evening of Readings in the Mother Tongue African Languages

Location: Emerald 1 - Sheraton Hotel

CHAIR: Phanuel Egejuru

Phanuel Egejuru, Loyola University _ Igbo
Pamela J. Smith, University of Nebraska - Omaha _ Krio
Tunde Akinyemi, University of Florida _Yoruba
Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah, Western Illinois University _ Hausa
Ousseynou B. Traore, William Paterson University, New Jersey _ Wollof
Mukoma Ngugi, University of Wisconsin-Madison _ Gikuyu
Mbulelo Mzamane, University of KwaZulu-Natal_ IsiZulu
Kassahun Checole, Africa Word Press _ Tigrinya
Ghirmai Negash, Ohio University _ Amharic

Note:  Music by Alhaji Papa Susso, Griot

 

Return to top of page

---

Thursday, April 16

7:00 AM - 9:00 AM: ALA Executive Council Meeting

Location: Tuckaway’s Restaurant – Sheraton Hotel

7:00 AM - 9:00 AM: TRACALA Meeting

Location: Carleton Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel

8:00 AM – 5:30 PM Registration (continued)

Location: Diamond Foyer – Sheraton Hotel

8:00 AM - 10:00 AM: Film Screening

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Ezra

8:00 AM – 9:45 AM Concurrent Sessions (B)

B1: African Diasporas and Black Cultural Identity
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Pauline Ada Uwakweh

Pauline Ada Uwakweh, North Carolina A &T State University
Dancing Backward:  Self Reconstruction in African Diaspora Novels – the Example of Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall

Oyeniyi Okunoye, University of Bayreuth, Germany
The Diaspora Interrogates the Homeland: Karen King-Aribisala’s Our Wife and Other Stories

Nduka Otiono, University of Alberta, Canada
Connecting Diasporas, Deterritorializing Narrative: Europe by Road and the Shifting Landscapes of Nollywood Film

Chiji Akoma, Villanova University
Mask or Mammon: Mediations on Africa in Black New World Imagination

 

B2: African Myth: Performance, Ritual, and Symbol as Cultural Strategy
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Christopher Olsen

Christopher Olsen, The University of Puerto Rico
Mythologizing African Power/Powerlessness

Benita Brown, Virginia State University
The Presence of the Sacred and the Secular in Mythology and Dance

Dannabang Kuwabang, The University of Puerto Rico
Collaboration or Resistance? Revisionary History as Myth: King Massanisa's and the Roman Conquest of Carthage in Willis Ricahrdson's The Black Horseman

Reinhard Sander, The University of Puerto Rico
Competing Myths of Liberation: The Haitian Revolution

 

B3: African-American Narratives and Cross-Cultural Imaginings
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Ngwarsungu Chiwengo

Ngwarsungu Chiwengo, Creighton University
Africa in African American Literature and Films: An Ideology or Homeland

Juliana Okoh, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Faces of African Culture in Selected African-American Drama

Stephane Robolin, Williams College
Exile and Maps of Transnational Racial Geographies

Raisa Simola, University of Joensuu, Finland
The Motif of Survival in Some Old and Modern Master and Slave Narratives

 

B4: Africanisms
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Graham Stewart

Graham Stewart, Durban University of Technology, South Africa
“Mirage of Us”: A Reflection on the Role of the Web in Widening Access to References on Southern African Arts, Culture, and Heritage.

Paulette Coetzee, Rhodes University, South Africa
Variation on Africanist Whiteness in Hugh Tracey's Narrative Representations of Africans and African Music

Paige R. McCormick, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Looking Inside Out: Chinua Achebe as African Tourist

Sarah E. Turner, University of Vermont
American Africanism, David Cronenberg’s Off-Kilter America, and The Dead Zone

 

B5: Africans Imagi[ni]ing Africa
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Renée Larrier, Rutgers University, New Jersey

Mahriana Rofheart, Rutgers Unirversity, New Jersey
Looking at Senegal from Immigration Limbo: Aminata Sow Fall’s Douceurs du bercail

Anjanita Mahadoo, Rutgers Unirversity, New Jersey
Memory As The Only Site of History: Minor Transnationalism in Shenaz Patel's Le silence des Chagos

Mamadou Wattara, Rutgers Unirversity, New Jersey
Mémoire du conte et mémoire(s) des peuples dans Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba

Eve J. Eisenberg, Indiana University-Bloomington
Yvonne Vera's Butterfly Burning and Suicidal Agency

 

B6: Afrifeminisms: Africa and Diaspora Feminisms in Intersecting Contexts
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Chinyere G. Okafor

Chinyere G. Okafor, Wichita State University
Representation of Female Power in Masking through Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Obioma Nnaemeka, Indiana University, Indianapolis
Negotiating Negofemenism in Western Contexts

Chioma Opara, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Nigeria
Power, Scathing Scars, and Body Dynamic in African Women’s Writing

Odun Balogun, Delaware State University
African and Diasporan Wowen Literary Common Space: Bessie Head, Mariama Ba, Zora Neal Hurston, and Toni Morrison

Helen Chukwuma, Jackson State University, Missouri
African Feminisms: Genre and Generation

 

B7: Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Daniel Gover

Daniel Gover, Kean University
From Fugard to Film

Marjorie May, University of California Santa Cruz
An Inevitable Interplay: Heroines and the Political in Nadine Gordimer's A Sport of Nature and Burger's Daughter

Hanneke Stuit, University of Amsterdam
Women in Waiting: Community, Hospitality and Gender in Njabulo Ndebele's The Cry of Winnie Mandela

Joya Uraizee, Saint Louis University
Dogs and Amnesia: How African Children Represent Murder and Enslavement in Tsotsi and Slave

 

B8: Approaches to Teaching African and African Diaspora Literature (Teacher’s Workshop)
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Kathleen Wininger

Kathleen Wininger, University of Southern Maine
Thought With a Sense of Place: Teaching Gender in African Philosophy, Film, and Literature

Kimberly C. Harper, East Carolina University
The Marginalization of  African Cultures in Post-Secondary Humanities Textbooks

Gail M. Presbey, University of Detroit Mercy
Using Oral Literatures, Interviews, and Autobiographies from Africa in Teaching Philosophy of Religion from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Elizabeth A. Eames, Bates College
Cinematic Portraits of Africa: Teaching African Film

 

B9: Articulating Theory: Concerns in Recent African Authorship and Publication
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Jonathan Pitts

Jonathan Pitts, Ohio Northern University
Editing the Late Daniel Kanyandekwe: A Reflection on (African) Authorship

Chinyere Nwahunanya, Abia State University, Nigeria
Red Lights on the Run Way: Dangerous Trends in Contemporary African Literary Criticism

Danielle Raquidel, Unirversity of South Carolina, Upstate
African Standards Versus French Standards

Hamisi Babusa, St. Lawrence University Canton, New York
The Death of Swahili Classical Poetry

 

B10: Arts, Ideology and Knowledge Production in Africa and the Diaspora
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Pim Higginson

Pim Higginson, Bryn Mawr College
Chester Himes’ Influence on Francophone African and African Diaspora Litertures

Modeste Malu, Facultes Catholiques de Kinshasa, France
La negritude dans la théologie africaine postcoloniale, Une quête d'inversion culturelle

Obi Nwakanma, Truman State University
Aesop, or the Igbo Sources of Greek Thought

Stephen Folárànmí, Obáfémi Awólówò University, Nigeria
Re-inventing African Literature Through Visual Arts

 

B11: Recasting Globalization: The Aesthetics of Banlieue Literatures in France # 1
Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Hervé  Tchumkam, University of Pennsylvania

Nathalie Etoke, Brown University
Black Blanc Beur: Ma France à Moi

Ariane Ngabeu, Boston University
Mémoire d'immigré et intégration chez Tahar Ben Jelloun et Faïza Guène

Keith Poniewaz, University of Pennsylvania

Sport and Social Imagination in Thomté Ryam’s Banlieue noire

9:45 AM – 10:15 AM: Coffee Break

Location: Promenade – Sheraton Hotel

10:00 AM – 5:00 PM: Book Exhibit

Location: Promenade – Sheraton Hotel

10:15 AM – 11:45 AM Film Screening

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Ndeysaan (The Price of Forgiveness)

10:15 AM – 12:00 Noon: Concurrent Sessions (C)

C1: Audience Responses
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Bernth Lindfors

Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas at Austin
Audience Responses to a BBC Broadcast of The Lion and the Jewel

Matthew H. Brown, University of Wisconsin-Madison
African Storytelling on Wheels: Engaging Wisconsin Children in Discussions about Africa

Anja Schwarz, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
“MUNTU – “A great help in aiding the Western world to better understand Africa”

Dean Makuluni, Madison-Wisconsin
"What Doing the Cape to Cairo Does to Your Already Messed Up Mind": Subverting the Imperial Eye in Sihle Khumalo's Dark Continent My Black Arse

 

C2: Authenticity and Intertextuality in African and Diasporic Texts
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Wendy Belcher

Wendy Belcher, Princeton University
Challenging the Challenges to African Texts: On the Problem of Demanding Black Authenticity

Byron Caminero-Santagelo, University of Kansas
The Art of Theft: Intertextuality, Plagiarism, and Zakes Mda's Heart of Redness

Darren Joseph Elzie, Southeastern Louisiana University
Language and Authenticity in African Literature

 

C3: Autobiography, Public Discourse, and Polemical Documentary
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Joseph McLaren

Amatoritsero Ede, Carleton University, Canada
Obama and the End of Blackness

Maryann Weber, Missouri Southern State University
Icons and Irony: Electoral Campaigns in Twentieth-Century Francophone African Fiction

Françoise Naudillon, Concordia University, Montreal
How Black? The Genetic Migration

Uche O. Okafor, University of Maryland
The 2008 US Presidential Elections in the Context of the Discourse of Postcolonialism

Joseph McLaren, Hofstra University, New York
Obama and Soyinka: Blackness, Ethnicity, and the Nation

 

C4: Between Opportunity and Intervention: The Constraints of Western Discourse and Politicized Production in African Cinema
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Josef Gugler

Josef Gugler, University of Connecticut
Five African Cinemas: A Continental Approach

Hope Heghagha, University of Lagos, Nigeria
Revenge and Justice in Nollywood: Filling in the Gaps?

Dirk Naguschewski, Berlin, Germany
Contesting Africanness in African Cinema. A Case Study

Maryellen Higgins, Pennsylvania State University, Greater Allegheny
Framing Western Humanitarianism and the Mission Salvatrice: Bassek ba Kobhio’s Le Grand Blanc de Lambaréné and Jean-Marie Teno’s Le Malentendu Colonial

 

C5: Black Female Aesthetics, Womanism, and Feminism
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: JoAnne Cornwell

JoAnne Cornwell, San Diego State University
Black Female Aesthetics: Representations in Writing by Women

Sarah Namulondo, University of South Florida
In Search of “Safe Spaces”: Yvonne Vera’s Under the Tongue and Flora Nwapa’s Efuru

Ijeoma Ibeku, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Thurman's The Blacker the Berry and Larsen's Passing, and the Dialectics of Black Skin Colour

Lionel Beasley, University of Vermont
Eyes Watching Us: Their Eyes Were Watching God as a Feminist Text

 

C6: Blessure existentielle : les nouveaux regards critiques
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, North Carolina State University

Cheryl Toman, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Cameroonian Literature Then and Now: Motherhood and Infertility in the Works of Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury and Anriette Madah

Cilas Kemedijo, University of Rochester
La littérature camerounaise : traverses de l'imaginaire

Alexie Tcheuyap, University of Toronto, Canada
Le cinéma camerounais et ses significations

Gilbert Doho, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Discussant

 

C7: Bodies at the Borders: Feminine Performance and the Rhetoric of Nation
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Ernest Cole

Ernest Cole, Hope College, Michigan
Reconstruction Female Subjectivity: Same-Sex Desire as Self-Refashioning in Annie John

Onuora Benedict Nweke, University of Lagos, Nigeria
Love, Cultural Realities and Black Women Fiction: Selected Works from Africa and African American Literature

Marie Kruger, University of Iowa
Migrations and Ghettos: Representations of Genocide in Recent Kenyan Women’s Literature

Marta Fernández Campa, The University of Miami, Florida
"A Way of Seeing" African Diasporic Autobiography; Discourses of Resistance

 

C8: Caribbean Discourses on Blackness
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Nadia Ellis

Nadia Ellis, University of California, Berkeley
“Negro with a Difference”: George Lamming, West Indian Subjectivity, and the Image of African Difference

Eldon V. Birthwright, Louisiana State University
Caribbean Social Thought through ‘Revolutionary’ Texts: Problematizing Discourses of Personhood, Nationhood and Black Nationalism

Patrina C. Jones, SUNY Stony Brook University
The Past’s Presence in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man and Claude McKay's Banana Bottom

Opportune Zongo, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
The City in Afro-Caribbean Women Writing

 

C9: Colonialism and Postcoloniality
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Jeanne Dubino

Jeanne Dubino, Appalachian State University
From Sunrise to Sundown: Remembering Kenya

Theodore Rose, University of Chicago
The African Subject and the Limits of Freedom at Sierra Leone

Doreen Strauhs, Goethe University - Frankfurt, Germany
Recent Anglophone Writing and Writers from Kenya and Uganda in the Spotlight

Jeff Bukowski, University of Vermont
Approaching Spiritual Colonization: Sheppard's Presbyterian Pioneers in Congo and Conrad's Heart of Darkness

 

C10: Comparative Approaches to Decolonization and Resistance in Different African and Diasporic ‘Literary’ Genres
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Elizabeth Ngumbi

Elizabeth Ngumbi, Ohio University
A Case for Improving Learning and Nurturing Vernacular in African Schools

Esiaba Irobi, Ohio University
Fuck You, Sincerely: The American Dream in the Novels of Toni Morrison

Bridget Tetteh-Batsa, Ohio University
In the Service of Progress: African Drama as an Ideological Weapon

Alex Wilson and Ghirmai Negash, Ohio University
Decolonizing the Academy: Reflections on Armah's KMT in the House of Life

 

C11: ROUNDTABLE: Publishing in America: A Workshop for Africa-based Scholars (ALA EXECUTIVE COUNCIL PANEL)
Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Eustace Palmer

Eustace Palmer, Georgia College & State University
Ernest Emenyonu, University of Michigan, Flint
Kwaku Larbi Korang, Ohio State University
Kassahun Checole, Africa Word Press
Kenneth Harrow, Michigan State University

12:00 Noon – 1:45 PM: Francophone Caucus Luncheon

Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel

SPEAKER: Pius Ngandu Nkashama
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
“Negritude, Migritude, et nouvelles ecritures francophones”

Note: Music by Alhaji Papa Susso, Griot

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM: Folon-Nichols Prize Board Meeting

Location: G’s Restaurant – Sheraton Hotel

1:15 PM- 3:15 PM: Film Screening

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Tales of Ordinary People

1:45 PM – 3:30 PM: Concurrent Sessions (D)

D1: Comparative Textual Studies in African and African-American Cultures
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Mbulelo Mzamane

Mbulelo Mzamane, University of KwaZulu-Natal
A Tribute to Es'kia Mphahlele

Solomon O. Azumurana, University of Lagos, Nigeria
Complexities of Existence in Selected African and African-American Novels

Mariam K. Deme, Western Michigan University
Aesthetic Imprints of an Epic Memory: An Analysis of the Narrative Techniques in Selected Films from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas

Stephen Ney, UBC - Vancouver, B.C.
The Brave Pilgrim in the Forest of Language: Translation and Yoruba Literature from John Bunyan to Wole Soyinka

 

D2: Contemporary Culture Industries and the Production of African Aestheticism
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Télesphore MBA BIZO

Télesphore MBA BIZO, Cameroon Radio Television, ASMAC
The Reasons for Nollywood Craze in French-Speaking  Cameroon

Iheanacho George Chidiebere, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia
African Literature, Technologies and the Challenges

Chioma L. Enwerem, Imo State University, Nigeria
Violence Against Women in Selected Nigerian Video Films and Novels

Dale Byam, Brooklyn College, New York
Have You Seen the Jonkonnu? The Role of Literature in Shifting the Center

 

D3: Cosmopolitanism and Post Apartheid South African Women’s Narratives
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Thelma Pinto

Thelma Pinto, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Manifestations of the Global and Local in The One that Got Away by Zoe Wicomb

Keiko Kusunose, Kyoto Seika University, Japan
New directions: Hiv/Aids and Beauty’s Gift by Sindiwe Magona

Toshiko Sakamoto, Ritsumeikan University, Japan
Blackness in Nadine Gordimer’s Novel

Huma Ibrahim, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
Waiting for the New South African Women's Writing

 

D4: Cosmopolitanism in African Literature
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Nada Halloway

Nada Halloway, Manhattanville College, New York
European and African Systems of Knowledge in Achebe’s Dead Man’s Path and Dongala’s The Fire of Origins

Hilary Kowino, University of Minnesota, Duluth
Cosmopolitanism in Ahmadou Kourouma's Suns of Independence

David Mikailu and Brendan Wattenberg, New York University
"My Name Will Not Be Lost" Reclaimed History and Cosmopolitan Temporality in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Headstrong Historian

Adrien Pouille, Indiana University Bloomington
The Global Consciousness of Okri’s The Famished Road

 

D5: Creative Writers and Public Responsibility
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Gabeba Baderoon

Gabeba Baderoon, Pennsylvania State University
African Privacies: New Subjectivities in Post-Apartheid Literature and Art

Nelson O. Fashina, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
African Writer's Pathogenesis and the Paradox of "Political" Imagination

Andrew Armstrong, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados
The Fall of the House of Usman: Leadership and the Failed Father in Ibrahim Tahir’s The Last Imam

William Slaymaker, Wayne State College
The Poetics of Pollution: The Oil Nightmare in Nigerian Literature

 

D6: Critical Perspectives on Mudimbe’s Shaba Deux: A Special Session of the ALA Francophone Caucus
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Janice Spleth

Janice Spleth, West Virginia University
Visual Imagery and Narrative Development in V.Y. Mudimbe's Shaba II

Marjolijn de Jaeger, New York University-SCPS
Translating Mudimbe: A Woman's Voice from a Man's Pen

Jean-Christophe L. A. Kasende, Dalhousie University
Une lecture tropique de Shaba deux de V. Y. Mudimbe : l'écrivain comme hypothèse de lecture

Joséphine Mulumba, Ludwig Maximilian Universität, Germany
La Passion selon Marie-Gertrude

 

D7: Cultural Dialogism: Africa, African Diaspora and the West
Location: Valcour – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Ziba Rashidian

Ziba Rashidian, Southeastern Louisiana University
Primatology in the Age of Globalization: Reading Fossey Now

Eduard Arriaga, The University of Western Ontario
Where the Afro-Latin-Hispanic American Artists Are?

Dumas F. Lafontant, Haitian Studies Association
African and African Diaspora Literary Criticism and Global Cultural Dynamisms

Sally Michael, SUNY Cobleskill
Africa as Lost Tradition, Subversion and Ellipsis in Harreyette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary

Katherine Baxter, University of Hong Kong
Africa-Asia Literature and the Ethics of Recognition

 

D8: Cultural Translation in Anglophone Literatures
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Robert Cancel

Robert Cancel, University of California, San Diego
Colonial/Postcolonial, Modern/Postmodern, National/Transnational, Fathers/Sons, Rural/Urban, Achebe/Abani: Nigerian Literary Bookends from Things Fall Apart to Graceland

Jonathan Highfield, Rhode Island School of Design
From Gotenborg to "A small Village Northeast of Addis Ababa": Marcus Samuelsson's Soul of a New Cuisine, Identity, and the Globalization of Food

Charmaine Lang, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Caribbean Writers: A Literary Analysis of the Impact of Colonial Education on African Centered Values

Fatima Radhouani Saidani, High Institute of Human Sciences Tunis, Tunisia
The Night is Beautiful, So the Faces of my People: Ain't I black? P. Everett’s Erasure and the Singing of Truth.”

Romanus Muoneke, University of St. Thomas, Texas
Morality and Justice in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

 

D9: Diasporic Consciousness in Literature
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Marie Léticée

Marie Léticée, University of Central Florida
The Quest Continues: The Emergence of the Creole Voices of the Caribbean

Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, York University, Canada
Interrogating Indianness: Diasporic Consciousness and Identity Among Afro-Asian Twice Migrants

Ezechi Onyerionwu, Abia State Polytechnic, Nigeria
The Diaspora, The Nigerian Twenty-First Century Novel and the Nigerian Female Youth: Disjointed Maturation in Abani, Dibia and Ezeigbo

Augustine Okereke, Medgar Evers College - CUNY
Expressions of Africanisms in the Novels of Caribbean Writers in the Diaspora: Elizabeth Nunez' When Rocks Dance, Discretion, and Prospero's Daughter

 

D10: Discourses of Resistance, Economies of Narrative Violence
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Amy Elder

Amy Elder, University of Cincinnati
Frieda and Firdaus: Paradoxical Meanings of the Imprisoned Voice in Zoe Wicomb’s . . . Cape Town and Nawal el Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero

Peter Leman, Unirversity of California, Irivine
Doing What Comes Constitutionally: Dictator Novels and the Legacy of Colonial Law in Africa

Robert Colson, University of California, Irvine
Arresting Time and Resisting Arrest: Narrative Time and the African Dictator in Wizard of the Crow

Theresah  P. Ennin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Confronting the Postcolony: Escapism and Defiance in Mustapha Matura’s Independence and Ngugi and Ngugi’s I Will Marry When I Want

 

D11: Kenya: “Uandisage” in Post-Election Violence, Writing and Print Culture
Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Keguro Macharia, University of Maryland, College Park

Shailja Patel, 2009 African Guest Writer, Nordic Africa Institute
Wangui wa Goro, Visiting Scholar, University of Kwazulu Natal
Binyavanga Wainaina, Director, The Chinua Achebe Center for African Literature and Languages, Bard College
Mukoma Ngugi, University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

3:30 PM – 7:00 PM: Vermont Teacher’s Workshop

Location: Catamount Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel

Speakers: Lokangaka Losambe [University of Vermont]  and Oty Agbajoh-Laoye [Monmouth University, New Jersey]

3:45 PM – 6:40 PM: Plenary Session

Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel

CHAIR: Isidore Okpewho, SUNY Binghamton

SPEAKERS:

Michael J.C. Echeruo, Syracuse University
“African Literature and the Burden of History”

Magdalene Odundo, University for Creative Arts, UK
“Those Objects and Material Culture”

V.Y. Mudimbe, Duke University
“Lex Perfecta Recta: A Meditation on Mediations”

6:40 PM – 8:10 PM: Graduate Caucus Mixer

Location: Living and Learning Fireplace Lounge – The University of Vermont

SPEAKER: Kevin Hickey, Albany College of Pharmacy
“Four Years of Bicycling across Africa”

8:00 PM - 10:00 PM: Poetry Reading

Location: The Fleming Museum – The University of Vermont

CHAIR: Major Jackson, University of Vermont

Danielle Legros, Georges, Leslie University
Evie Shockley, Rutgers University
Gregory Pardlo, The Graduate Center - CUNY
Afaa Michael Weaver, Simmons College
Gabeba Baderoon, Pennsylvania State University
Chimalum Nwankwo, North Carolina A&T State University
Amatoritsero Ede, Carleton University, Canada
Obi Nwakanma, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri
Shailja Patel, Guest Writer, The Nordic Africa Institute

Note: Music by Alhaji Papa Susso, Griot

An Evening of Poetry in Memoriam: Aimé Césaire (April 16, 2009 from 8-10 p.m. with the museum opening at 7:00 p.m. for gallery tours of the Jackson /Cordova Exhibition)
Fleming Museum 101

Fleming Museum Exhibition Information:

More than Bilingual: William Cordova and Major Jackson
1/27/09 - 5/10/09
Although Peruvian-born visual artist William Cordova and African-American poet Major Jackson come from divergent backgrounds, both artists find inspiration and common ground in music, literature and the urban aesthetic. The fluency with which they navigate cultural signifiers and media, results in a shared visual multilingualism. The two artists have long admired one another’s work; the Fleming Museum is pleased to bring them together in a collaborative exhibition for the first time.

If you would like additional information please visit www.flemingmuseum.org.

Return to top of page

---

Friday, April 17

7:00 AM - 8:30 AM: ALA Executive Council Meeting

Location: Tuckaway’s Restaurant – Sheraton Hotel

7:00 AM - 8:30 AM: TRACALA Meeting

Location: Carleton Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel

8:00 AM – 5:30 PM: Registration (continued)

Location: Diamond Foyer – Sheraton Hotel

8:00 AM – 9:45 AM: Concurrent Sessions (E)

E1: Blackness, Gender, Feminism: Continuities and Discontinuities in African, African Diaspora and New African Diaspora Aesthetics (TRACALA PANEL)
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Wangui wa Goro

Wangui wa Goro, Visiting Scholar University of Kwazulu Natal
Translating through the Minefield: Difference, Indifference, and Difference: Aesthetics in Shailja Patel’s Migritude and Zubeida Jaffer’s Love in the Time for Treason

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Penn State University - Altoona
When Women Write Africa: An Examination of Gender Roles in Ama Atta Aidoo’s Dilemma of a Ghost and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood

Sandra Staton-Taiwo, Penn State University - York
The Old African Diaspora in Recent African American Literature: Afrocentric Motherhood as a Site of Power in Morrison’s Song of Solomon

Carol Blessing, Point Loma Nazarene University
Exile and Maternal Loss in the Poems of Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Shailja Patel, Guest Writer, The Nordic Africa Institute
A Feminist Reframing of Contemporary African Poetry

 

E2: Disrupting Narratives of Africa in Art and Cinema
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Uchenna Onuzulike

Uchenna Onuzulike, Ohio University
Nigerian Movie Industry (Nollywood): An Avenue for African Cultural Narratives

Abdullah Mohammed, Ohio University
From Intellectuals to Amateurs, from Literature to Film: Artistic Practices in Contemporary Tanzania

Erin M. Schwartz, Ohio University
Self-Exposure: Performance, Identity and the Visual Art of Musa and Mwangi

Lance Larkin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Primitive Art and Tourist Aesthetics: Zimbabwean Sculptors' Battle for Autonomy in International Markets

Kasongo M. Kapanga, University of Richmond
Juju Factory or the Retelling of Congolese History: Duality at Bay

 

E3: Ecocritical Perspectives on Postcolonial African Literatures
Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Erin Conley

Erin Conley, University of Kansas
Ecocritical Approaches to Niyi Osundare’s Eye of the Earth

Dustin Crowley, University of Kansas
Environmental Injustice and Chris Abani’s GraceLand

Paula Prisacaru, University of Kansas
Postcolonial Place and the Nigerian Condition in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease

Shelley Stonebrook, University of Kansas
The Environmental Unconscious in J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

 

E4: Écrire la blessure existentielle, méditations d'écrivains camerounais
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Ambroise Kom

Ambroise Kom, College of the Holly Cross, Massachussetts
Discussant

Gilbert Doho, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
La Cicatrice: Romancer l'histoire passée et actuelle au Cameroun

Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi, North Carolina State University
Writing the Anglophone (Minority) Experience

Nathalie Etoke, Brown University
Cameroun mon pays : pays réel, pays rêvé

Frieda Ekotto, University of Michigan
Chuchote pas trop : Un livre de notre bibliothèque

 

E5: Ethnographic, Indigenous, Chiral, and Rural: Comparative Programs of Representing African Knowledge in African Literature
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: T. Spreelin MacDonald

T. Spreelin MacDonald, Ohio University
Vonani Bila, the `Rural,' and Indigenousness in Post-apartheid South Africa

Ghirmai Negash, Ohio University
Dedicated to South Africa: Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying as a Fiction of Local Ethnography

Marlene De La Cruz-Guzmán, Ohio University
Privileging Indigenous Knowledges Beyond Modernism and Postmodernism: Writing as Detraumatization after the Biafran War in Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun

Nicholas M. Creary, Ohio University
Chiral Interdiscursivity in African Literature: A Comparison of B.W. Vilakazi and Jorge Barbosa

 

E6: Eurocentric Texts and the Otherness of Blackness
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Renée Schatteman

Renée Schatteman, Georgia State University
Representations of Africa and Africans in the Works of Caryl Phillips

Victoria Pettersen Lantz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Calculating Conduct: The Incarceration of Blackness and Constructed Identities in Black Britain

Nikolina Dobreva, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
KARMEN GEÏ and MTV’s CARMEN: A HIP HOPERA As Contemporary Constructions of Racial/Ethnic Otherness Based on a Eurocentric Text

Daphne Potts, University of California, Davis
“‘What the hell kind of a place is this…?’”: King Kong Meets King Kong—Global Reconfigurations in Perceived Blackness

E7: Exil Et Retour / Voyages Dans Les Romans Francophones de L'Afrique Occidentale (FRANCOPHONE CAUCUS)
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Jean Ouedraogo

Jean Ouedraogo, SUNNY, Plattsburgh
L'esthétique du voyage dans l'oeuvre romanesque d'Ahmadou Kourouma

Eronini E. Egbujor, Paine College/Augusta State University
L'intellectuel africain au bercail et en 'exil' chez Tierno Monénembo

Carrol F. Coates, Binghamton University, SUNY
Portraits peuls : quelques brins d'ethnographie littéraire

Karim Traoré, University of Georgia
L'esthétique du voyage dans 'Soudjata ou l'épopée mandingue' de D. T. Niane

 

E8: Exile, Memory, Reconstitution of Subjectivity
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Mary McCullough

Mary McCullough, Samford University
Between Two Shores: Memory and Mourning in Tahar Ben Jelloun's Jour de Silence à Tanger and Leila Sebbar's Le Silence des Rives

Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, Medgar Evers College / CUNY
Political Widowhood and Returning Home: The Story of Catherine Ajizinga Chipembere of Malawi

Mark O. Ighile, Redeemer’s University, Mowe, Ogun State, Nigeria
Re-branding Literature and the Bible through the African Mirror: The Example of Bini Proverbs and Philosophical Worldview

Laura Hengehold, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Interrupting the Economy of Miracles

 

E9: Francophone African Literature and Francophonie
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Thomas A. Hale

Thomas A. Hale, The Pennsylvania State University
Francophone African Literature and Francophonie: A Long View of Linguistic Imperialism

Joséphine Mulumba, Ludwig Maximilian Universität, Germany
Monde globalisé ou errance? Les jeux de l’effacement des origines dans Patrick et les Belges de Tshisungu wa Tshisungu

Phyllis Taoua, University of Arizona
Unfulfilled Longing in Sony Labou Tansi’s Le Commencement des douleurs

Edgard Coly, Monterey Institute of International Studies, California
Nostalgie coloniale et racisme banalisé De Stephen Smith dans Négrologie (2003), à Nicolas Sarkozy lors dans son discours de Dakar, du 26 juillet 2007

 

E10: Francophone African Literature: Old and New Directions
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Edgard Sankara

Edgard Sankara, University of Delaware
L'appropriation du masculin dans Kesso, Princesse peuhle

Hervé Tchumkam, University of Pennsylvania
L'intérieur de la nuit de Léonora Miano: apories et enjeux de la profanation

Siendou Konaté, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
La Francographie ouest-africaine à la loupe de Decolonising the Mind de Ngugi

Edris Makward, The University of Wisconsin-Madison
Fanon’s La Francographie ouest-africaine à la loupe de Decolonising the Mind de Ngugi

 

E11: Youth Literature, Young Writers, Pedagogy
Location: Amphitheater – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Andrew Smyth

Andrew Smyth, Southern Connecticut State University
Representing African Teenage Girls in Literature for Young Adults

Camillus Chima Ukah, Association Of Nigerian Authors, Nigeria
Identification and Grooming of Young Literary Talents Based on the ANA Imo Young Writers Club, an Outreach Programme of the Association  of Nigerian Authors, Imo State Branch

Osayimwense Osa, Virginia State University
African and Multicultural Literatures for Coss Cultural Teaching and Learning

Lucy Dlamini, University of Swaziland
Transforming Lives Through Literature: Ernest J. Gaines' In My Father's House

9:45 AM -10:15 AM Coffee Break

Location: Promenade – Sheraton Hotel

10:00 AM - 5:00 PM: Book Exhibit

Location: Promenade – Sheraton Hotel

10:00 AM - 11:45 AM: Film Screening

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Hyenas

10:15 AM – 12 Noon: Concurrent Sessions (F)

F1: Foregrounding Sierra Leonean Literature I
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Eustace Palmer

Eustace Palmer, Georgia College & State University
The Agony and the Ecstasy: Sierra Leonean Dramatists’ Confrontation with the Sierra Leonean Landscape

Ernest Cole, Hope College, Michigan
Chanting the Song of Sorrow: Diamonds as Metaphor of Social Disillusionment in The Diamonds and ‘Blood Diamond’ in Sierra Leone

Mohamed Kamara, Washington and Lee University, Virginia
Lessons for the Present: Aminata Forna and the Reconstruction of Sierra Leone’s Past

Onookome Okome, University of Alberta, Canada
Early Colonial Narratives of the Sierra Leonean Colony and Syl Cheney Coker´s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar

 

F2: Francophone Films, North African Literature
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Kathryn M. Lachman

Kathryn M. Lachman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Displaced Paternal Genealogies in Francophone Algerian Fiction: Yacine, Camus, Khadra, and Djebar

P. Julie Papaioannou, University of Rochester
The Aesthetics of Ambivalence in Jean-Marie Teno’s Clando

Azouz Ali Ahmed, Queen's University, Ontario
Le Rapport a l'historie dans L'oeuvre de Kateb Yacine

Viviane Békrou, College of Charleston, South Carolina
Engagement et critique sociale dans les téléfilms ivoiriens: le cas de Ma famille d’Akissi Delta et de Nafi de Ouattara Eugenie

Samuel Zadi, Wheaton College
Au Delà de l’Amour : la Nouvelle Afrique des Films Inspirés d’Adoras

 

F3: Gender, Sexuality, and Subjectivity in Literature
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Kanika Batra

Kanika Batra, Texas Tech University
Exit, Nkoli, and the Long Road to Freedom: Gay and Lesbian Activism in South Africa

Margaret Cox, Medgar Evers College / CUNY
Tales of Women in Buchi Emecheta's Novels

Stephanie M. Selvick, University of Miami
Gender Panic!: Battling for South African Lesbian Subjectivity Through Resistance Poetry

Chinyelu Florence Ojukwu, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Gender Complimentarity in the Anti-Colonial Struggle: Akachi Adimorah-Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones

 

F4: Globalisation, violences postcoloniales, et modalités de la représentation
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Alexie Tcheuyap

Alexie Tcheuyap, University of Toronto, Canada
Filmer la peine de l'autre. La guerre du Soudan à l'écran

Isaac Bazié, UQAM (Université du Québec À Montréal)
Violences postcoloniales et rhétoriques de la commémoration

Marie-Pierre Bouchard, UQAM (Université du Québec À Montréal)
Journaliste-écrivain et devoir de mémoire: Gil Courtemanche et la réception d'une mémoire présentiste

Josias Semujanga, University of Montreal
La littérature du massacre de Tutsi dans les mémoires de l'Afrique. Comment dire l'inhumain?

 

F5: Historicizing Post-colonial Discourse: Encounters with an Epistemology of Blackness
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Helga Schreckenber

Helga Schreckenberger, University of Vermont
The Representation of Blackness in the Literature of German Exiles in the U.S.

Mayowa Saja, University of Essex, England
Blackness and Darkness, from New World to Third World: Perceptions and Stereotypes as Literary Tools

Tyanai Charamba, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe
Postcolonialism and the Concept of Blackness in Africa - An Evolutionist Politico-Economic Approach

Andrew Aba, Benue State University, Nigeria
A Re-reading of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God through Post-colonial Lenses

 

F6: History and Textuality in Francophone Literature
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: M. Saidu Kabia

M. Saidu Kabia, Virginia State University
"Les contes dans le conte: Une étude de" Dans les couloirs du labyrinthe " d'Emmanuel Matateyou

Frédérique Donovan, Boston University
L’Afrique de Ken Bugul

Gerald D.Kendrick, Lincoln University, Missouri
Ousmane Sembene’s March of the Women: An Exegetical Textual Analysis from Chapter to Novel of God's Bits of Wood

Karim Sagna, Earlham College, Indiana
La répétition dans l’écriture de Massa M. Diabaté

 

F7: Identity and Blackness in Cotemporary African Art
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Allison Moore

Allison Moore, Univeristy of Vermont
Identity Remix? Wangechi Mutu and Julie Mehretu

Kristina Van Dyke, African Art at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas
Looking for Love in Contemporary African Art

Kevin Mulhearn, CUNY Graduate Center
Lolo Veleko: ‘Blackness’ is in the Eye of the Beholder

Allan deSouza, The San Francisco Art Institute
Fly Zone

 

F8: Identity Politics in Francophone Literatures
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Alain Ekorong,

Alain Ekorong, DePauw University
De l'Altérité dans Branle-bas en noir et blanc de Mongo Beti: l'imposture identitaire

Ahmed Bouguarche, California State University, Northridge
Une langue, deux personnages sans frontière culturelle dans l'œuvre chez Akli Tadjer

Patricia Siewe, Pennsylvania State University
L'ailleurs problématique chez Nathalie Étoké

 

F9: Imaginings of Africa and Blackness in Photography and Visual Arts
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Emmanuel Yewah

Emmanuel Yewah, Albion College, Michigan
Photography and the Mythic Construction of Africa(ns)

Eckhard Breitinger, Bayreuth University, Germany
Africans in the Works of Painters/Sculptors from  Franconia (South East Germany)

Blanche Mackey-Williams, Medgar Evers College, New York
Authenticity of Blackness in Modern and Visual Arts

Brayo Njoroge, IFreeCans Collective, London
IFreeCans as method: Translating in/and Visual Narration

 

F10: Immigrant Voices in Short Stories (WOCALA PANEL)
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka

Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, University of Kansas, Lawrence
Peas in A Pod

Naana Banyiwa Horne, Santa Fe Community College, Florida
Criss-Crossing the Atlantic

Ada U. Azodo, Indiana University Northwest
“Academic Rape” in Full Twenty-First Century”

Tomi Adeaga, University of Siegen, Germany
The Millennium Pact

 

12 Noon – 1:45 PM: WOCALA Luncheon

Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel

SPEAKER: Theodora Akachi Ezeigbo, University of Lagos
“Endangered Species: African Cultures, Literatures, and Languages”

Note: Music by Alhaji Papa Susso, Griot

1:30 PM – 3:15 PM: Film

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Iron Ladies of Liberia

1:45 PM – 3:30 PM: Concurrent Sessions (G)

G1: Foregrounding Sierra Leonean Literature II
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Abioseh Michael Porter

Abioseh Michael Porter, Drexel University, Pennsylvania
Envisioning a World: Poetry and the Visual Arts in the Works of J.P.Clark and Syl Cheney-Coker

Sheikh Umarr Kamarah, Virginia State University
Literature, ‘Portraiture,’ and Future: Contemporary Krio Poetry on Post-war Sierra Leone

Patrick S. Bernard, Franklyn and Marshall College, Pennsylvania
The Civil War and the Sierra Leonean Writer: The Beginnings of a National Literature?

 

G2: Immigration, and Cultural Translation
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Jeanne Garane

Jeanne Garane, University of South Carolina
Re-Casting the Metaphor of Translation: Self-Translation and Francophone Literatures

Chandani Patel, University of Chicago
Modernist Vernaculars, Non-Homogeneity, and the Neo-real Experience in Samuel Selvon's Moses Trilogy

Véronique Maisier, Southern Illinois University
Subjects and Subject Matters in Merle Hodge's Novels

Marame Gueye, East Carolina University
Going Up or Going Down? Language, Immigration, and Fatou Diome's Le ventre de l'Atlantique

 

G3: Initiating Dissent in Cultural Memory: Aural and Visual Histories through Literary Models
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Kenneth W. Harrow

Kenneth W. Harrow, Michigan State University
Toward a Cinema of Garbage: Kimberly Roberts’s Trouble the Water

John Nimis, New York University
Literary Listening: Congolese Music and African Literary Studies Today

Cara Moyer, Howard University
Truth, Reconciliation, and Cinema: Reflections on South Africa's Recent Past in Ubuntu's Wounds and Homecoming

Kelly Secovnie, University at Albany, SUNY
Cultural Translation in Nigerian and Ghanaian Plays

 

G4: So You Want a Tenure Track Position? Navigating Faculty Job Interviews -- the Knots and Bolts for Graduate Students (ALA EXECUTIVE COUNCIL PANEL)
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Maureen N. Eke

Maureen N. Eke, Central Michigan University
Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, University of Kansas, Lawrence
Aliko Songolo, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Fahamisha Brown, Metropolitan College of New York

 

G5: L'Afrique des Artistes et Ecrivains Africains Francophones
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Hélène Tissières

Hélène Tissières, University of Texas at Austin
Défis et créations de deux figures sénégalaises : Iba Ndiaye Diadji, critique d’art et Moustapha Dimé, sculpteur

Christian Flaugh, SUNY Buffalo
De/forming Re/production: Gender and Ability in the Works of Tahar Ben Jelloun

Bagnini Kohoun, West Virginia University
Sia le rêve du python ou le mythe contre la dictature africaine

 

G6: Les Ecrivains Francophones et l'Essai: L'auteur, son texte et ses contextes
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Co-Chairs: Irène Assiba d'Almeida and Sonia Lee

Irène Assiba d'Almeida, University of Arizona, Tucson
L’essaiI: Genre Hybride Chez Tanella Boni (Tanella Boni's Essays: A Hybrid Genre)

Sonia Lee, Trinity College-Hartford, Connecticut
Les Essais d'Assia Djebar: De l'interrogation à la prise de position

Khadidiatou Gueye, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Beyond the Logic of Visibility: Rereading Senghor’s Négritude

Patricia Célérier, Vassar College
Effets de retour: Juillet au pays Chroniques d'un retour à Madagascar (2008) de Michèle Rakotoson

Boubakary Diakité, Franklin & Marshall College
"Voir le monde pour dire l’exception" Le regard conciliant chez Cheikh Hamidou Kane  et Fatou Diome

 

G7: Literature of the Environment
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Sonja Darlington

Sonja Darlington, Beloit College, Wisconsin
Environmental Cross Currents: Ethiopian and Sudanese Writers and Visual Artists

Simon Lewis, College of Charlston, South Carolina
Ecotones: Landscape, Public Space, and Private Conscience in Ingrid de Kok’s Poetry

Fatma Al Hagi, Libya
The Desert in the African Novel

 

G8: Literature, Music, and Social Transformation
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Katwiwa Mule

Katwiwa Mule, Smith College
Translation and/as Self-Empowerment: Julius Nyerere’s Translations of Shakespeare

Otoburu J. Okpiliya and Idom T. Inyabri, University of Calabar, Nigeria
Orality, Youth Vocality and Post-Colonial Subjectivity in Contemporary Nigerian Popular Music

Olalere Adeyemi, University of Ilorin, Nigeria
Cosmopolitanism in African Literature: Contemporary Yoruba Novels as Example

Halima Sekula, Nasarawa State University, Nigeria
Depiction of African Social Crises in Benjamin Kwakye's The Sun by Night

 

G9: Narrating Trans-Antlantic Slavery in West African Fiction
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Laura Murphy

Laura Murphy, Ithaca College
Future of the Past: The Slave Trade and the West African Historical Novel

Matthew Christensen, University of Texas, Pan American
Slaves, like Diamonds, are Forever: Postwar Histories in Sierra Leonean Drama

Nandini Dhar, University of Texas, Austin
Performing Trauma, Performing Rebellion in Mohammed Ben-Abdallah's The Slaves

Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi, Université de Montrréal
Slavery and the Imperatives of Narrative Form

 

G10: What is Africa To Me?: Re-imagination, Remembrance and Representations of Africa in African Diaspora Literature
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Oty Agbajoh-Laoye

Oty Agbajoh-Laoye, Monmouth University, New Jersey
Playing in the Luminosity of Blackness: Historicizing Meta Sources in Selected African Diaspora Literature

Ousseynou B. Traore, William Paterson University, New Jersey
“Muh  Gran . . . He frum Africa”: Ancestry and Lyricism of the Middle Passage in the Works of Robert Hayden, Phillis Wheatley, and Toni Morrison

Mzenga A Wanyama, Augsburg College, Minneapolis
The Haunting Images of Africa in African American Literature

Tunde Awosanmi, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
African World Drama and Trans/Multiculturalism

3:30 PM – 3:45 PM: Coffee Break

Location: Promenade – Sheraton Hotel

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM: Film Screening

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: The FBI’s War on Black America

3:30 PM – 7:00 PM: Vermont Teacher’s Workshop

Location: Catamount Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel

Speakers: Lokangaka Losambe [University of Vermont] and Oty Agbajoh-Laoye [Monmouth University, New Jersey]

3:35 PM – 5:00 PM: Concurrent Sessions (H)

H1: L'Afrique des Artistes et Ecrivains Francophones II
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Ousseynou B. Traore

Ousseynou B. Traore, William Paterson University, New Jersey
Wood, Word, Wood: Transcreating Cesaire and Senghor into Sculpture

Ada U. Azodo, Indiana University Northwest
Ken Bugul and the African Imaginary in La Folie et la Mort

Nimrod Bena Djangrang, University of Michigan
Critique & Destin: Lecture de L’étrange destin de Wagrin d’Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Guy Tegomo, Queen's University, Ontario, Canada
Au cinéma comme dans la vie! Le danger, il est [vraiment] partout, mon vieux? Le cinéma, facteur transfigurant dans le roman africain

Nyunda ya Rubango, Creighton University
Identité, immigration et satire du pays natal dans les œuvres de la Diaspora congolaise

H2: Nation and Narration: Other Experiences
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Neil ten Kortenaar

Neil ten Kortenaar, University of Toronto, Scarborough
Achebe’s Arrow of God, Becoming Nigerian, and the Problem of Succession

Lanie Millar, University of Texas at Austin
Abolition of a Nation: J. E. Agualusa’s Nação crioula

Carla Martin, Harvard University
Creating and Debating Culture: The Catalytic Role of Cape Verdean Literature and Music in Public Discourse

Jung Hee Park, SungKyunKwan University, South Korea
Mongane Serote’s Poetics of Silence: Representing the Silenced History of South Africa

 

H3: Nation and Narration: The Zimbawean Experience
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Munashe Furusa

Munashe Furusa, Carlifornia State University, Dominguez Hills
An Exertion of Memory: Chenjerai Hove and the Narration of the Zimbabwean Nation

Joy Wrolson, University of Kansas
Re-Inventing Memory and Reforming Performances in Zimbabwe:  Attempts at Defining a Genre (Panic Theatre or Theatre for Development, after the Murambatsvina

Praise Zenenga, The University of Arizona
From the Fringe to the Center Stage: The Changing Notions of Blackness in  Zimbabwean Theatre History

Joseph Chikowero, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Gendering the Postcolony: Contesting the National Narrative in Zimbabwean Women’s Writing

 

H4: National Counternarratives
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Olabode Ibironke

Olabode Ibironke, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Marechera’s Zimbabwe: The House of Hunger 30 Years After

Sybille N. Nyeck, University of California, Los Angeles
The Autobiography of Things Left Undone: Perspectives on the Politics of Literature and Hyphenated Friendship in Africa

Joyce Dixon-Fyle, DePauw University
AIDS in African Fiction: A Critical Analysis of Sidagamie, by Abibatou Traoré, Confessions of an AIDS Victim by Carolyne Adalla, and Sunset on Polygamy by Joseph Alila

Torsten Sannar, University of California, Santa Barbara
"I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City!": Sanctions and Opportunities at a South African Mega-Resort

 

H5: Nigerian Video Films
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Paul Ugor

Paul Ugor, University of Alberta, Canada
Urban Revitalization and Youth Identity Politics in Nigeria: Social Struggles in Nollywood Movies

David Lawrence Platzer, University of California, Santa Barbara
Yoruba Traveling Theater and Nigerian Video Film: A Critical Media Archeology

Wumi Raji, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria
Urbat Routes: Affinity, Affiliation and Trans-broder Migration in a Nigerian Postcolonial Video-Film

 

H6: Orality and Performing Arts
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Adetayo Alabi

Adetayo Alabi, University of Mississippi
The Auto/biographical Images of Africa in Udje Poetry

Harry Garuba, University of Cape Town, South Africa
African Literature and the Ideology of Orality

Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, The Pennsylvania State University
Africanizing Grimm’s Fairy Tales:  Storytelling and a “Universal Culture” of Childhood

Abdullahi S. Abubakar, University of Ilorin, Nigeria
Postcolonial Aesthetics and Revolutionary Dialectics in African Dramatic Theatre

 

H7: Other Aspects and Aspects of the Other in Francophone Literature: Views of / from Algeria
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Anne F. Carlson

Anne F. Carlson, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Perspectives of the Other in Maissa Bey's Bleu, blanc vert

Alek Toumi, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Le damné de sa terre : Boualem Sansal, l’interdit

Michele Chossat, Seton Hill University
Resistance in Exile: Alek Toumi’s Algeria

 

H8: Performing Arts and African/ African Diasporic Politics
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Catherine Cole

Catherine Cole, University of California, Berkeley
The REwind Cantata: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Repertoire

Kevin Hickey, Albany College of Pharmacy, New York
No Black Male Show: Carl Hancock Rux and the Heritage of “Black Performance"

Victor Yankah, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Ananse as a Paradigm of Identity in Ghanaian Drama

Bose Tsevende, University of Jos, Nigeria
Black Artistes and Reconstitution of Black People in the African Dance: A Dancer Choreographer's Perspective

Anita Rosenblithe, Raritan Valley Community College, New Jersey
Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo and Maishe Maponya’s Gangsters: African Nation Building and Alternative Space

 

H9: Power Plays: Women and Gender in African Literature
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Lanisa Kitchiner

Lanisa Kitchiner, Howard University
House Matters: Power, Place, and Black Female Subjectivity in Fatima Dike’s So What’s New

Ijeoma C. Nwajiaku, Federal Polytechnic, Oko, Anambra State, Nigeria
Cosmopolitanism and Gender: Issues in Adimora Ezeigbo’s Fiction

Pia Thielmann, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Walije Gondwe’s Representation of Malawian Women

Regina Kwakye-Opong and Grace Uche Hassan, University of Ghana, West Africa
"Echoes from Black Africa that Cannot be Burried": The Legacies of Efua Sutherland on the Image of African Women

 

H10: ROUNDTABLE: Que chantent balafons et tam-tams: Hommages à Ambroise Kom
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Cilas Kemedijo

Cilas Kemedijo, University of Rochester
Ambroise Kom: le chantier institutionnel

Alexie Tcheuyap, University of Toronto, Canada
Ambroise Kom: Éloge de la manipulation

Célestin Monga, World Bank
Ambroise Kom: marque déposée et licence de franchise

Gilbert Doho, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Le Chemin de Hiela [Hommage au critique et éducateur Ambroise Kom

Nathalie Etoke, Brown University
Mongo Beti et Ambroise Kom: Pour une théorie de la responsabilité

André Djiffack, Brown University
Ambroise Kom : l'enseignant, le chercheur, le mentor

 

H11: War, Genocide, and Prison Literature
Location: Amphitheater – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Mark L. Lilleleht, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Minata Kone, University of Cocody - Abidjan, West Africa
African Prison Literature

John Illah, University of Jos, Nigeria
From Dafur to Goma: Africa's Humanity and Soyinka's Trans-cultural Mediation

Jean Claude Kwitonda, Ohio University
Death Leitmotif in Francis Imbuga’s Works and Perspectives of Liberation in African Literature

Jide Balogun, University of Ilorin, Nigeria
Martyrdom and African Literature: A study of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s A Month and a Day

5:15 PM – 7:00 PM: Film Screening

Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Carmen GEI

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM: Awards Evening

Location: Diamond Ballroom – Sheraton Hotel

Folon-Nichols Award: Tess O. Onwueme
ALA Distinguished Membership Award: Kenneth W. Harrow

Note: Music by Alhaji Papa Susso, Griot

8:15 PM – 10:15 PM: Special Film Presentation

Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel

Title: Saracca and Nation: African Memory and Re-Creation in Grenada and Carriacou
Presenter: Merle Collins, University of Maryland

 

Return to top of page

---

Saturday, April 18

7:00 AM - 9:00 AM: ALA Executive Council Meeting

Location: Tuckaway’s Restaurant – Sheraton Hotel

8:00 AM – 9:45 AM Concurrent Sessions (I)

I1: Producing the Paradigms: Knowledge and Heritage for a Global African Epistemology
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Felicity Palmer

Felicity Palmer, University of Southern Mississippi
The Concept of Children’s Rights and The Representation of Children in Yvonne Vera’s Novels

Chioma Oruh, Howard University
The Butterfly Theory

Nehprii Amenii, Khunum Productions, Inc., New York
Children’s Literature, Self-Imagery, and the Orientation of Tradition

Germain Nyada, University of Bayreuth, Germany
Conceptualizing Africa in Diasporic Childhood Accounts

 

I2: Recasting Globalization: The Aesthetics of Banlieue Literatures in France # 2
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Hervé  Tchumkam, University of Pennsylvania

Patricia Siewe, The Pennsylvania State University
“Littérature de banlieue”: topographie ou esthétique? A propos de Le Gone du Chaaba d'Azouz Begag

Yvonne-Marie Mokam, University of Arizona
Le vent du large: Le Nègre de Marianne comme point de contact

El hadji Camara, University of Western Ontario
Un temps de saison de Marie Ndiaye ou l'espace-temps entre dépossession et quête identitaire

 

I3: Reclaiming African Consciousness: Narrative Nostalgia, Protest Fiction, and the Western Critical Model
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: David Hoegberg

David Hoegberg, Indiana University, Indianapolis
Toward a Postcolonial Materialism: Coetzee Criticism in the 1980s and 1990s

Jodie Barker-Maradan, Rutgers University, New Jersey
Dance and the Dynamics of Tension and Release in Senghor's Elegie pour la Reine de Saba

James Hodapp, University of Maryland, College Park
Speaking When Not Spoken To: Beyond Writing Back in Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy

Lisa DeVries, Victoria College, Texas
"Where they all know salvation comes from": Inverting Biblical Narrative in Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy

 

I4: Representations of Africa and Blackness in African-Diaspora Literature
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Simone James Alexander

Simone James Alexander, Seton Hall University, New Jersey
"Once a Great Wrong Has Been Done, It never Dies": Africa Remembered and Ritualized in Caribbean Literature

Simone Drake, The Ohio State University
"He Said Nothing”: Aphasia and Brasilidade in Danzy Senna's Caucasia

Tracey Walters, Stony Brook University, New York
Black British Writers and the Politics of Hair

Silvia Lorenso, University of Texas, Austin
The Audacity of Re-Writing History in Contemporary Brazil: Literature, Power and Black Body Resistance

 

I5: Representations of Blackness and Africa in World Literature
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Salome C. Nnoromele

Salome C. Nnoromele, Eastern Kentucky University
Questions from My Students: Contending with the Western Media in the African Literature Classroom

Zubairu Wai, York University, Ontario
Representing African Conflicts: The Media of Violence and the Violence of Media

Daria Tunca, University of Liège, Belgium
The Burden of Misrepresentation: Writing "Otherness" in John le Carré's The Constant Gardener and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun

Rebecca Cech, University of Pittsburgh
Reading Blackness in the Classroom: Heart of Darkness and Negritude

Carol Ijeoma Njoku, University of Nigeria Nsukka
The Journey from Achebe to Adichie: Progression and Continuum in the Representation of Women Characters

 

I6: Representations of Blackness in African Literature
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Moradewun Adejunmobi

Moradewun Adejunmobi, University of California, Davis
Race, Geography, and Indian Ocean Literature

Mathilde Rogez, New College and Pembroke College - Oxford, UK
“Africans come in all colours of humanity, Ma’am”: Representations of Blackness and Africanness in Zakes Mda’s Cion

Aika Swai, Stanford University
Towards a Therapeutic Definition of "Africa"and "Blackness" in the Literature of Bessie Head, Yvonne Vera, and Mia Couto

John Stafford Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Say it Loud:  I Might be Black and I Could be Proud:  Race, Space, and Place in the Cape Town Coon Parade

 

I7: Topographies of Collectivity: Emphasizing Narrative Artistry
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Catherine Kroll

Catherine Kroll, Sonoma State University, California
Staying Power: Story, Self-Care and Collective Knowledge in Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa

Bernadette Cailler, University of Florida
Un Dimanche au cachot (Patrick Chamoiseau, 2007): Analysis of a Palimpsest

Claire Counihan, Nazareth College, New York
Detecting Outside History: Erasures of Colonial and Postcolonial Trauma in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

Joyce Ashuntantang, University of Connecticut at Storrs
Writing from the Margins of the Margin: Jedida Asheri's Promise

 

I8: ROUNDTABLE: Book Review: Fathers & Daughters
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah

Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah, Western Illinois University
Ayebia Clarke, Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited
Ato Quayson, University of Toronto, Canada

 

I9: ROUNDTABLE: A Conversation with Animation Filmmaker Kibushi N’djate Wooto: Teaching African Literature with Animation Film (TEACHING AND RESEARCH PANEL)
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Pius Ngandu Nkashama

Pius Ngandu Nkashama, Louisiana State University
Kibushi N'djate Wooto, Brussels, Belgium
Ngwarsungu Chiwengo, Creighton University
Della Goavec, Central Missouri State University
Emongo Lomomba, Université de Québec à Montréal, Canada

 

I10: ROUNDTABLE: The Poetry Scene in Ghana
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Victor Yankah

Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Victor Yankah, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Theresah P. Ennin, University of Wisconsin

 

I11: Unmaking the Nation: Literary Disruptions and Representational Contexts
Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Eloise Brière

Eloise Brière, The University of Albany, SUNY
Freedom to Be? Literary Ventriloquism in Contemporary African Novels

Joseph Dieme, Humboldt State University, California
From the Plantation to the Inner City: Challenging the Concept of the Nation State in Un papillon dans la cité by Gisele Pineau

Richard Serrano, Rutgers University, New Jersey
Zaghloul Morsy's Literature Without a Future

8:15 AM – 9:45 AM: Film Screening

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM WOCALA Round Table

Location: Carleton Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Helen Chukwuma, Jackson State University, Missouri

Topic: Legacies:Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba,Bessie Head, Zulu Sofola and Yvonne Vera

Amy Elder, University of Cincinnati
Marie Umeh
Chioma Opara, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Nigeria
Chinyere G. Okafor, Wichita State University
Blessing Diala-Ogamba, Coppin State University, Maryland

9:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Vermont Teacher’s Workshop

Location: Catamount Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel

Speakers:

Lokangaka Losambe [University of Vermont]
Oty Agbajoh-Laoye [Monmouth University, New Jersey]
Emongo Lomomba, Université de Québec à Montréal, Canada

9:45 AM – 10:15 AM: Coffee Break

Location: Promenade – Sheraton Hotel

10:00 AM – 11:15 AM: Film Screening

Location: Providence Boardroom – Sheraton Hotel
Film: The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

10:00 AM – 5:00 PM: Book Exhibit

Location: Promenade – Sheraton Hotel

10:15 AM – 12:00 PM Concurrent Sessions (J)

J1: African and African Diaspora Literary Criticism and Global Cultural Dynamisms
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Ato Quayson

Ato Quayson, University of Toronto, Canada
Kobolo Poetics: African Street Life and Literary History

Anjali Prabhu, Wellesley College
Thinking Literary History through  Literature of the Encounter: Frantz Franon, Albert Memmi, Edouard Glissant

Susan Andrade, University of Pittsburgh
Realism, Reception, and 1968

Patrice Nganang, SUNY, Stony Brook
A Theory Of Islands : Reading Kincaid Through Carl Schmitt

David Jenemann, University of Vermont
Toward a Theory of Cinematic Ambivalence

 

J2: African Cultures of Speculative Narration
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi

Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi, Université de Montréal
Notes on African Near-Future Narratives

Ian P. MacDonald, Columbia University
African Dystopic Technologies of State

Olivier J. Tchouaffe, Southwestern University, Texas
Les Saignantes: African Cinema and Science-Fiction

Gichingiri Ndigirigi, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Cosmopolitan Wizardry in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow

Dayna Oscherwitz, Southern Methodist University
Once Upon a Time in the West: African Cinema and the Hollywood Western

 

J3: ROUNDTABLE: Honoring Aimé Césaire
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Aliko Songolo

Aliko Songolo, University of Wisconsin
Aimé Césaire, une poétique de la découverte

Abiola Irele, Harvard University
Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, the annotated edition

E. Anthony Hurley, Stony Brook University (SUNY)
H. Adlai Murdoch, University of Illinois
Debra S. Boyd, North Carolina Central University

 

J4: ROUNDTABLE: Violence and Postcoloniality
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Huma Ibrahim

Huma Ibrahim, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
Thelma Pinto, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Amy Elder, University of Cincinnati
Nezar Andary, UCLA / Zayed University
Keiko Kusunose, Kyoto Seika University, Japan

 

J5: Sembene and the Question of Blackness
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Amadou T. Fofana

Amadou T. Fofana, Willamette University, Oregon
What Does it Mean to be African in Sembène's Films?

Moussa Sow, The College of New Jersey
Sembène et le mercenaire: le cinéaste africain en question

Lifongo J. Vetinde, Lawrence University, Wisconsin
Sembène Ousmane et la Negritude: Esquisse d'une relation paradoxale

 

J6: Slavery, Colonialism and Resistance
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang

Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
This is Our Story, This is Our Song: Material and Audible Evidence of Resistance to Enslavement in Gwollu, Ghana

Angela Fubara, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Nigeria
Rythym of Violence in Akachi Admora-Ezeigo's Trafficked

Nadia Alahmed, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
An Anthem for the Dream Land: the Legacy of Poetry for the Palestinian and African-American Nationalism in the 1960-70s

Emad Mirmotahari, Tulane University
Anti-Arab Motif in Sub-Saharan African Literature

Frances Novack, Ursinus College, Pennsylvania
Ourika "la negresse":  Between Revolution and Romanticism

 

J7: Source Narratives and Colonial Texts: Perspectives on Denigration and Social Injustice
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg

Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, Babson College, Massachussetts
Explosions in Black and White: Race, Gender, and Human Rights in Caryl Phillips' Cambridge and A Distant Shore

Maureen Amaka Azuike, University of Jos, Nigeria
Trapped in the Spider's Web: Black Man's Experience in The Lonely Londoners and in Native Son

Susanne Gehrmann, Humboldt-Universitaet Berlin
The Intertextual Affiliation of Léonora Miano's Novel A l'interieur de la nuit with Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit

Laura White, Binghamton University, New York
Arthur Conan Doyle's Egypt: An Ecocritical Investigation

 

J8: Spirituality in African and African Diaspora Literatures
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Kerry Vincent

Kerry Vincent, Acadia University - Nova Scotia, Canada
“When There is No King There is No Incwala:”  Representation, Power, and Accounts of Swazi Rituals

Thomas Stokes, Wabash College, Indiana
Divination and Old Bones: Traditional Uses of the  Wisdom of the Elders

Osita C. Ezenwanebe, University of Lagos, Nigeria
Blackness with Inhumanity? The Argument of Human Sacrifice in African Drama and Theatre

Charlotte Baker , Lancaster University, UK
“Être albinos": The Trope of Albinism in the Novels of Williams Sassine

 

J9: Teaching African Women’s Literature of Resistance (TEACHER'S WORKSHOP)
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Jennifer Browdy

Jennifer Browdy, Bard College at Simon's Rock, Massachussetts
Working Through Suffering: Teaching Painful Texts by African Women Writers

Pauline Dongala, Bard College at Simon's Rock, Massachussetts
Experience as Authority: Reflections of A Student/Teacher/Author of African Women’s Literature

Anne Serafin, Independent Scholar
Introducing African Women Through Literature: Exploring with Adult Learners

Alyxandra Gomes Nunes, Federal University of Bahia State, Brazil
The Teaching of African Literature in the Brazilian Curriculum 5 Years after the Law 10.639/03

 

J10: Techniques narratives: Icônes culturelles, images et métaphores dans la littérature et le cinéma
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Amadou Ouédraogo

Amadou Ouédraogo, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Sociétés secrètes, pratiques rituelles et esthétique de l’imaginaire dans le film Yeelen de Souleymane Cissé

Christophe Konkobo, Tennessee State University
Playing the Mask: Bodies of Identities in Francophone Drama

Schahrazede Longou, Knox College
Le séisme au centre de la création littéraire chez Maïssa Bey dans Surtout ne te  retourne pas: Quand « la réplique » se fait double

Viviane Diamitani, Iowa City, Iowa
De la conceptualisation à  la représentation : la reproduction du passé  nostalgique dans la littérature et le cinéma beurs, des croisés, et des  écrivains juifs ou arabes de L’Afrique du Nord

 

J11: Visualizing Later Colonialisms
Location: The Amphitheater – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Onookome Okome, University of Alberta, Canada

Andrew Mulenga, The Post Newspaper, Lusaka, Zambia
48 Years of Kappata's Visual Expression

Toni Pressley-Sanon, University of Wisconsin-Madison
History Happened Here: Castles of Ghana and Tree Sculpture in Benin Republic as Sites of Memory

J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada, Abia State University, Nigeria
Mbari Museum Art Among the Igbo: Lessons in the Age of Globalization

Barine Ngaage, Niger Delta University, Nigeria
Black Dances and Masquerades of Ogoni Express Nationhood

Carmela Garritano, University of St. Thomas
The Gold Coast Film Unit's The Boy Kumasenu and the Mapping of Colonial Modernity

12 Noon – 1:30 PM: TRACALA Luncheon

Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel

SPEAKER:
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
Title: “Cosmopolitanism”

Note: Music by Alhaji Papa Susso, Griot

1:30 PM – 3:15 PM: Concurrent Sessions (K)

K1: The Black European Experience
Location: Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Ena Cecilia Vulor

Ena Cecilia Vulor, Marietta College, Ohio
The Black European Experience: Remapping the French Literary and Cultural Landscape (A Look at Immigrant Writers in France)

Wandia Njoya, Daystar University, Kenya
Migration, Intellectual Decadence and African Migration to France

Sulagna Mishra, Purdue University
Racing Paris in the Age of Transnational Capitalism: Body-Politic and the City as Postcolonial Practice in Beyala’s Amours Sauvages, Pineau’s Chair Piment, and Houellebecq’s Plateforme

Michael Gott, University of Texas, Austin
Black, Blanc, Beur or "Black, Black, Black"?: Roots, Rhizomes, and the “Afro-française” Update of French Republicanism

 

K2: The Impact of Trauma on Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in African and African Diasporic Texts
Location: Exhibition Hall – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Oumar Cherif Diop

Oumar Cherif Diop, Kennesaw State University, Georgia
Traumatic Failures and Disassociation in the Novels of Yvonne Vera

Whitney Edwards, Howard University
Migration Trauma: An Examination of Intersubjective Crossings and Identity in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker

Griselda Thomas, Kennesaw State University, Georgia
Traumatic Intersubjectivity and Subtextual Trauma in Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata

Rose A. Sackeyfio, Winston Salem State University, North Carolina
Fractured Identity and Psychological Violence in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

 

K3: The Real and Imagined Africa in Classical and Early Modern Writings: From Voltaire to Boilat; Africans in the Late 19th - Century America
Location: Emerald 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Gareth Griffiths

Gareth Griffiths, University of Western Australia
Coming to America': The Literary Trope of "African Princes" in America in the Late 19th and 20th Centuries

Mohamed Kamara, Washington and Lee University, Virginia
Voltaire, Africa, and the Limits of Tolerance

Kandioura Dramé, University of Virginia
Abbé David Boilat's Representation of Africa and the Africans

 

K4: The Task of Translating Linguistic Innovation in Postcolonial African Literatures (TRACALA PANEL)
Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Peter W. Vakunta

Peter W. Vakunta, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The African Writer at the Crossroads of Languages: African Literature in Indigenized and Hybridized Languages

Natasha Himmelman, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town
Marta Sofia López’s Un Grano de Trigo: Translating Ngũgĩ’s A Grain of Wheat into an “African” Spanish

Jonathon Coplen Rose, Lakehead University, Canada
Al Purdy’s Cultural Translation of Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead

George Joseph, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Biblical Translation into Wolof: From Text to Text or Theory to Text?

 

K5: Things Fall Apart at 50
Location: Emerald 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Tejumola Olaniyan

Tejumola Olaniyan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant

Olakunle George, Brown University
Sacrifice, Representation, Achebe

Adeleke Adeeko, Ohio State University
The Anti-Okonkwo

Kwaku Larbi Korang, Ohio State Univerisity
Postcolonial Humanism in Achebe's Things Fall Apart

 

K6: Retelling Black Histories
Location: Willsboro Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Mary Louise Kete

Mary Louise Kete, University of Vermont
New England Dreams of Africa

Steve Edwin, Independent Scholar
“Skilled at Unraveling Lies”: Testimony, Fiction and History in Michelle Cliff, and Gayl Jones

Barbara J. Webb, Hunter College, CUNY
Spectrality and the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Michelle Cliff’s Free Enterprise

Elisabeth Bekers, University of Brussels, Belgium
Re/Membering Aunt Jemima and Other Black Stereotypes in African-American Women's Writing

 

K7: Tradition and Continuity in Contemporary National Theater
Location: Valcour Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Andrew Barnaby

Andrew Barnaby, University of Vermont
Auctor, Authorship, Authority: Colonialism’s Primal Scene in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman

Mabel I.E. Evwierhoma, University of Abuja, Nigeria
The Discourse of Power in Contemporary Nigerian Palace Plays

Chinyere Nwagbara, NERDC, Nigeria
Of Women,Tradition, and Culture: Soyinka's Fidelity to Traditional African Position in his Selected Plays

Donald M. Morales, Mercy College, New York
Review: Words and Worlds African Writing, Theatre, and Society

 

K8: Tradition and Modernity in African Literature
Location: Kingsland Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Akin Adesokan

Akin Adesokan, Indiana University
Restless Cosmopolitanism: Andrew Salkey’s Anancy Stories

Dana Hard, University of Vermont
The Depiction of Kala in Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala

Nichole Rothaupt, University of Vermont
The Dream of the Ideal: The Role of Edima as a Catalyst and an Object in Mission to Kala

Therese Pennell, East Carolina University
The River Between: Kabonyi, The Real Villain

Olivia Everett, East Carolina University
Different Ways of Knowing: Female Circumcision As Identity in The River Between and Possessing the Secret of Joy

 

K9: Transfigured Testimony: Cartography, Visual Arts, and the Diasporic Imaginary
Location: Shelburne Room – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Barbara Schulz

Barbara Schulz, Eastern Oregon University
Mahi Binebine's Luminous Darkness

April Sizemore-Barber, University of Calfornia, Berkley
Embodying the Past: Rethinking and Re-membering  History in South Africa's Living Museums

Kayode Omoniyi Ogunfolabi, West Virginia University, Morgantown
Of Congos, Solibos and Makaks: Africa in Caribbean Imagination

Christopher Ian Foster, The City University of New York
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Postcolonial Poiēsis and the Production of Translocality: Reading the World in Half of a Yellow Sun

 

K10: W.E.B. Du Bois—A Historical Evaluation
Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Josie Brown-Rose

Josie Brown-Rose, Western New England College
“Unreconciled Strivings”: Gender, National Identity, and Du Bois’ Double Consciousness

Aisha Damali Lockridge, Allegheny College, Pennsylvania
Uplifted Out of Du Bois: Ntozake Shange and the Talented Tenth

Laura Quinn, Allegheny College, Pennsylvania
Aging into Allegory: The Late Work of Du Bois and Gordimer

 

K11: Transfiguring Landscape: Feminist Subversion, Reflection, Enactment
Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel
Chair: Janet Elinor Whatley, University of Vermont

Denise Handlarski, York University, Toronto, Canada
Tactics of Resistance: South African Women's Literature

Safoura Boukari, Western Illinois University
Theorizing African/Black Diaspora: Contextualizing Women’s Discourses and Teaching from a Kemetic Perspective

Blessing Diala-Ogamba, Coppin State University, Maryland
Socio-Cultural Issues in Zukiswa Wanner's The Madams

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM Francophone Caucus Business Meeting

Location: Amphitheater – Sheraton Hotel

3:45 PM – 5:45 PM: ALA Business Meeting

Location: Emerald 3 – Sheraton Hotel

5:00 PM – 6:15 PM: Film Screening

Location:Amphitheatre – Sheraton Hotel
Film: Courting Justice

7:00 PM – Midnight: ALA Closing Banquet

Location: Exhibition Hall –Sheraton Hotel

SPEAKER: Zakes Mda, Ohio University
“The Pink Mountain: Landscapes and the Conception of a Literature of Public Action”

 

Return to top of page

---

Sunday, April 19

7:00 AM – 9:00 AM: ALA Executive Council Meeting

Location: Diamond 1 – Sheraton Hotel

7:00 AM - 9:00 AM TRACALA Business Meeting

Location: Diamond 2 – Sheraton Hotel

 

 

Return to top of page

Last modified April 13 2009 08:52 AM