Beyond French: New Languages for African Diasporic Literature
A Conference of Scholars and Authors at Yale University
Organizers: Edwige Tamalet Talbayev and Christopher L. Miller
March 29-30, 2013
In recent years, Africans from former French colonies in both the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan regions have been settling in countries other than France and writing in languages other than French. This break with the colonial and postcolonial habits of la Françafrique—the familiar bind of metropole and colony—has been going on for years and is now ripe for analysis.Writing in German, Italian, Dutch, Catalan, Spanish, English, and other languages, these authors suggest new patterns of diasporic belonging and raise new questions about the postcolonial world. Issues of immigration, language choice, cosmopolitanism, global citizenship, and world literature will be addressed.
Keynote Address
Dominic Thomas (University of California, Los Angeles)
Featured Speaker
Mireille Rosello (University of Amsterdam)
Panelists
Sabrina Brancato (University of Bayreuth)
Allison Crumly (Harvard University)
Cristina Lombardi-Diop (Loyola University Chicago)
Graziella Parati (Dartmouth College)
Cristián Ricci (University of California, Merced)
Ieme Van der Poel (University of Amsterdam)
Authors’ Roundtable
Pap Khouma
Originally from Senegal,lives in Italy; writes in Italian. Author of Io, venditore di elefanti (I Was an Elephant Salesman) and Nonno Dio e gli spiriti danzanti
(Grandfather God and the Dancing Spirits).
Laila Lalami
Originally from Morocco, lives in US; writes in English. Author of Hope and
Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son
Rachida Lamrabet
Originally from Morocco, lives in Belgium; writes in Dutch. Author of Vrouwland (Woman Country) and De man die niet begraven wilde worden (The Man Who Didn’t Want to be Buried)
Contacts: edwige.tamalet@yale.edu and christopher.miller@yale.edu
Conference supported by Yale University:
Department of French, The Edward J and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund,
Council on African Studies, Council on Middle East Studies,
Departments of Comparative Literature, Italian, and Germanic Languages and Literatures,
The Whiney Humanities Center