Rutgers University Intercollegiate Symposium March 28-29, 2019
pdf Download a printable flyer (432 KB)
The Symposium Global Africa, Migration, Literature, and the Arts is intended to explore how Africans and people of African descent globally have been and continue to be at the center of complex histories of encounter and exchange, traversing geographic, generational, and cultural boundaries over the centuries. It will highlight the lived experiences of migration of, and its impact on, the people of Africa and its Diaspora through the prism of the arts – literature visual cultures and performances including film, comics, graphic arts, painting, photography, music, and dance. Departing from a critical examination of the discourses of migration, location, home and identity in the context of social and cultural transit, the symposium will position Africans and the African Diaspora as participants and players in the movement of both tangible and intangible matter – multi-generic ideas, texts, stories, memories, artifacts and performances— as they move through time and space in the World. In the final analysis, the symposium will highlight the multidimensional nature of the interchange between Africa and other regions of the world as experienced in the realm of the arts, demonstrating once again the global/international reach and scope of the arts and art movements from Africa and the African Diaspora.
School of Arts and Sciences, School of Business, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Center for African Studies, French department, Italian department, and the Zimmerli Art Museum
Conveners: Ousseina Alidou (AMESALL) and Renée Larrier (Dept. of French)
Email:
Symposium Program
For a general schedule of the symposium, scroll down. For specifics, click the red subheadings.
Wednesday, March 27
Presymposium Film Screening: Maasai Remix
Location: Scott Hall, Room 201, Rutgers College Avenue Campus, 1:10pm - 02:30pm
Symposium – Day 1
Thursday, March 28
Alexander Library Teleconference/Lecture Hall, Rutgers College Avenue Campus
8:00 am: Registration and Breakfast
9:00 am: Welcome and Opening Remarks
9:30 am: Panel 1 Global Africa, Material Cultures, and the Arts of Being
11:15: Coffee / Cacophonous cognates: Poetry Performance by Thato Magano
11:30: Keynote Address
Manthia Diawara: Global Africa: Some Trembling Thoughts From Edouard Glissant
12:45: Lunch
1:30: Panel 2 Global Africa, Hip Hop Cultures, and Sonic Agency
3:15 pm: In Honor of Kassahun Chekole and Africa World Press
Conversation with Christopher Wise on The Manuscript of Timbuktu
4:15 pm: Coffee Break
4:30 pm: Panel 3 Global Africa, Decolonial Praxis, and the Literary Imagination
6:30 pm: Reception
7:30 pm: Film Screening and Conversation
An Opera of The World by Manthia Diawara
Symposium – Day 2
Friday, March 29
Alexander Library Teleconference/Lecture Hall, Rutgers College Avenue Campus
8:00 am: Registration and Breakfast
9:00 am: Panel 4 Global Africa, Migrations, and the Ethics of Conversation
10:45 am: Coffee Break
11:00: Panel 5 Global Africa, Women’s Bio-Graphics, and the Practice of Diaspora
12:45 pm: Lunch / South African Writer, Sisonke Msimang
pdf Reading from Always Mother Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (324 KB)
1:45 pm: Panel 6 Global Africa, Aesthetic Mobility, and Digital Cultures
3:30 pm: Mother and Daughter as African Artists
Conversation between Adérónké Adésolá Adésànyà and Tosin Adésànyà-Olaleye
4:15 pm: Coffee Break
4:30 pm: Panel 7 Global Africa, Critical Blackness, and the Wakanda Imaginary
7:00 pm – 10:00 pm: Concluding Remarks and Celebration – ZIMMERLI MUSEUM
