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Whose Africa?: Representations of Africa in Contemporary African and Diasporic Literature, NeMLA, Montreal, April 7-11, 2010
| Location: | Quebec, Canada |
| Call for Papers Deadline: | 2009-09-30 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2009-09-05 |
| Announcement ID: |
170420 |
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The global imaginary is marked by a long history of claims made to Africa by a range of western writers and thinkers as disparate as Hegel and Conrad. These portrayals of the ‘dark continent’ still circulate in our current global imaginary, reinforcing prevailing stereotypes and engendering new ones. This panel intends to investigate contemporary literary representations of Africa through a consideration of the ways in which both African and diasporic literatures imagine it. Early twentieth century writers―like black modernists in the United States and the Caribbean as well as African writers affiliated with decolonization―found it necessary to engage with these western claims. But these writers produced their own reactionary claims to an imagined Africa, as they wanted to mobilize certain political agendas (e.g. Afrocentrism or Pan-Africanism).
This panel, then, wants to think about the ways in which contemporary writers on both sides of the (black) Atlantic are working within and in reaction to these various claims to (an imagined) Africa. How does Africa get mobilized to do complex symbolic and ideological work? What do contemporary authors do with such a complicated inheritance? Do they engage with romantic and utopian traditions of depicting Africa? Or are the current depictions of Africa deprived of hope because of the failure of anticolonial movements? Namely, do contemporary authors continue making claims to Africa or do they want to problematize such approaches? If so, then how do these issues get reflected in the literary techniques they employ in their works? Please send 250-abstracts to mjniemi@buffalo.edu and jhyland@buffalo.edu.
Deadline: September 30, 2009
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)
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