USA Africa Dialogue Series - African Literary Symposium

http://www.hallcenter.ku.edu/~hallcenter/cgi-bin/index.php/calendar/event/african-literary-symposium

Calendar

African Literary Symposium 
Featuring keynote speaker, Biodum Jefiyo, Professor of African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard University.


Public Symposium 

Thu., Oct. 27, 2011, 8:00am - 6:00pm

The awarding of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature to the Nigerian dramatist and social activist, Wole Soyinka, marked the first time the award had gone to an African writer. Since then, three other African writers have been the recipients of the award. This symposium will explore the roles of African writers and their works in light of this paradigmatic award. It will examine the state, focus, and direction of African literatures, both the verbal and performing arts, within a global context and from new critical perspectives. It will also investigate the response of a new generation of African writers to issues raised by transnationalism, migration, and local identities engendered by globalization.

The nature of African literature has gone through astonishing transformations, and globalization, in particular, has created a new category of African writers. Thetransnationals, consisting mostly of writers emerging in the last twenty-five years, but including some more established figures, move easily geographically and creatively among their home countries, other lands, and sources of inspiration.

What stories do these writers tell, and how do they tell them? How do the vision, focus, and style of the transnational writers differ from the earlier generations of anti-colonial and post-independent (postcolonial) writers? In what ways has globalization shaped contemporary African literatures, if any? How are contemporary African literatures situated in a newly emerging reconceptualization of World Literatures? Finally, has globalization, with all its complexities and implications, created new African literary aesthetics and critical impulses? The symposium will seek to address these questions.

The keynote speaker, Biodum Jefiyo, is Professor of African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is a renowned literary critic and theorist. Plenary speakers are drawn from multiple generations of African writers, theater practitioners, and critics, including Niyi Osundare, Okay Ndibe, Ghirmagi Negash, Nozipo Maraire, Catherine McKinley, Niyi Coker and Femi Euba.

For more information, please contact Omofolabo Ajayi- Soyinka (Theatre & Film/Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies) at 864-2691 or omofola@ku.edu.   A detailed schedule will be posted here as soon as it is available.