Convened @ Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr Colleges
Free and open to the public
In 1964 Chinua Achebe published his novel Arrow of God. There have been events across the world celebrating the 50th anniversary of this novel. Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr Colleges are convening a conference in recognition of this landmark text, 6-10 October 2014. There will be a series of events across the three liberal arts college campuses featuring participants from a variety of fields in the sciences, humanities, and arts. Guests, students, and faculty will engage in an extended dialogue that begins with the significance of Achebe's work and extends into the work of young artists and contemporary issues that reverberate with his writing's influence. Arrow of God is a novel about the powerful and the sacred, culture and the colonial encounter, history and moral choice. It shows Achebe at the height of his power as a storyteller who reinvents the potential power of telling tales. He interweaves nuanced details of daily life with a dramatic tale of political intrigue in the midst of the colonial encounter in a fictionalized Igboland. As in all of his novels, Achebe creates complex characters whose motivations, desires, and flaws at once resonate with particular life-worlds and with broader humanist ideas of the tragic hero. His stories focus on the moral, political, and emotional choices of people caught up in historical transformations over which they have little control. Achebe's concern with myth, memory, history, power, and the processes of telling open-ended stories have inspired our focus on the notion of (ir)reverence. While Things Fall Apart is familiar to many readers, Arrow of God is seen by many critics as his masterwork. While Achebe's work is playful and humorous, it simultaneously offers profound reflections on spirituality, choice, and possible futures. His eye for emotional and social detail is shaped by a critique of racism, gendered inequality, and colonial domination. Achebe's reinvention of the novel through the use of proverbial speech is an organizing principle showing his penchant for double voicing; simultaneously saying something and its opposite, poking fun in sincere tones, chastising with a humorous twinkle in his eye. This conference traces continuities and discontinuities across half a century and a global network of places to triangulate on issues of moral, political, and cultural transformation at the core of Achebe's work and contemporary African expression. Our main focus will be examining irreverence as a technique for living, a way to confront power, and method of telling stories.
Sponsors
Hurford Humanities Center, Distinguished Visitors Office, CPGC, KINSC, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Anthropology, Africana, Biology, English, First Year Writing (Haverford);
African Consortium, Black Studies, French and Francophone Studies (Swarthmore); Education, Africana (Bryn Mawr).
Organizers
Jesse Weaver Shipley, Iruka Okeke, Zolani Ngwane, Carina Yervasi, Alice Lesnick
Thomas Bonner, Stephanie Zukerman, Susan Penn, Kathy McGee
Schedule
6 October Monday: Haverford College
Sharpless Auditorium
4:15 Introduction: Jesse Weaver Shipley
4:30 Keynote Talk: Ato Quayson, Literary Scholar, author of Oxford Street, Accra
"Achebe's Literary Compass: Arrow of God and the Question of Tragedy"
5:30 Panel: Achebe's Legacy in African Literature (Chaired by Zolani Ngwane)
Tsitsi Jaji, Literary Scholar, author of Africa in Stereo. "Chinua Achebe's Poetry: Writing When There Was a Country"
Chika Unigwe, Novelist, author of On Black Sisters Street " A Cow Gave Birth to a Fire..."
Niq Mhlongo, Novelist, author of Dog Eat Dog. "Remembering Achebe: Land, Identity, and Culture in post-apartheid South Africa"
7 October Tuesday: Haverford College
2:30-4 A Conversation on Ancestors-Niq Mhlongo and Hylton White (Classroom setting: not open to the public)
4:15 Introduction: Chidi Achebe
4:30 Keynote Talk: Binyavanga Wainaina, author of One Day I Will Write About This Place "I am an Imaginer, riding Africa's glorious terrible hurricane"
5:30 Panel: "Medical Science and Practice in Africa" (Chaired by Zolani Ngwane)
Julie Livingston, Anthropologist, Macarthur Award winner, author of Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic. "The Problem of Pain in African Health Care"
Iruka Okeke, Biologist, author of Divining without Seeds: The Case for Strengthening Laboratory Medicine in Africa. "Eating Sacred Yams: Diagnostics and disease in African health Systems"
Ike Anya, Science writer, health policy analyst and physician based in Nigeria and the UK; co-host of Nigeria Health Watch Blog. "Of Knowledge Power & Changing Worlds"
7:00-8:30 PM
Dinner--Screening--Filmmaker Discussion
FOKN Bois (Emmanuel Bonsu and Mensa Ansah), musicians/filmmakers
Filmmaker Introduction
Screening COZ OV MONI part 1 (2012) Produced by and Starring FOKN Bois (Wanlov the Kubolor and M3nsa)
Followed by Q & A with the stars/filmmakers
8 October Wednesday: Swarthmore College
Science Center 199
4:30 PM Round Table Discussion: Irreverence: Digital Media and Visual Art
(Moderated by Carina Yervasi)
Featuring:
FOKN Bois (Wanlov the Kubolor and M3nsa), musicians/filmmakers
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, conceptual artist/art historian
Rob Marriot, hip-hop activist, journalist, co-founder XXL Magazine
LPAC 101 (Cinema)
8:00 PM Screening-Filmmaker Discussion
Filmmaker Introduction
Screening: COZ OV MONI Part 2 (2014) Produced by and Starring FOKN Bois (Wanlov the Kubolor and M3nsa)
Followed by Q & A with the stars/filmmakers
9 October Thursday: Bryn Mawr College & Swarthmore College
Bryn Mawr College
Canaday Library, First floor
1-3:30 Writing Workshop
Writers Niq Mhlongo and Chika Unigwe are masters and transformers of the role of literary storyteller for a rising generation. Together they will lead participants into writing -- inspired by theirs -- that is at once expressive and critical, intimate and distanced.
(NOTE: Preregistration required; not open to the public)
Niq Mhlongo, Novelist, author of Dog Eat Dog
Chika Unigwe, Novelist, author of On Black Sisters Street
Wyndham, Ely Room
4:00. Coffee before panel
4:30-6 Panel: Pedagogical Encounters (Chaired by Alice Lesnick)
Niq Mhlongo, Novelist, author of Dog Eat Dog
Chika Unigwe, Novelist, author of On Black Sisters Street
Pim Higginson, English, author of The Noir Atlantic
Swarthmore College
Bond Memorial Hall
8:00 Screening and Discussion (hosted by Carina Yervasi)
"Bringing Chinua Achebe and Ousmane Sembene into Dialogue"
Screening: Guelwaar by Ousmane Sembene, Senegal, 1992 (115 minutes)
Refreshments.
Student Participants: Daniel Asplin, Laina Chin, Eve DiMagno, Wesley Han, Hazlett Henderson, Timothy Hirschel-Burns, Fae Montgomery, Sabrina Pascoe, Victoria Stitt, Susan Whaley
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