Women, Memory & Transmission. Postcolonial Perspectives from the Arts and Literature (Maison Française d'Oxford)
Women, Memory & Transmission. Postcolonial Perspectives from the Arts and Literature
In partnership with TORCH, Fluxus, Photo Oxford 2021,
Wolfson College (Oxford) and Association des Lecteurs de J.-M.G. Le Clézio.
Watch live here: https://youtu.be/mMpaezMGlO8
In collaboration with Photo Oxford Festival 2021, hosted by the Maison Française d’Oxford, and supported by the Humanities Cultural Programme, the international and interdisciplinary Conference “Women, Memory & Transmission: Postcolonial Perspectives from the Arts and Literature” will explore what it means for women to transmit memories in postcolonial contexts. What strategies do women develop to tackle postcolonial issues? What are the issues to address and the struggles to lead to be heard and valued as tellers of History? What ethical and political issues does the reception of their works raise? The conference will bring together art-world figures and scholars in the fields of gender studies, memory studies, postcolonial studies, and Global South studies to adequately contribute to show how the Humanities can lead to a better awareness of the key social and political role of women in reinterpretation of colonial History as acts of resistance and empowerment.
The conference will coincide with a photographic exhibition by Elisa Moris Vai, showcased during the 2021 Festival at the Maison Française d’Oxford (15 Oct. – 15 Nov.). The French photographic artist Elisa Moris Vai will present her series Catherine, Kiambé, Surya. The exhibition shows her photographic response to three female characters in La Quarantaine (1995) and Révolutions (2003), set in Mauritius, by Nobel Prize J.M.G. Le Clézio. The images closely intertwine fiction and reality, literature and photography, to better understand how the transmission of memory can be a tool of resistance and empowerment by women in postcolonial contexts.
Provisional programme (subject to minor changes)
9h - 9h15
Opening Act
Pascal Marty, Director of the Maison Française d’Oxford
Danielle Battigelli, Festival Director, Photo Oxford Festival
Justine Feyereisen and Elisa Moris Vai, Convenors
9h15 – 10h15
Panel #1 Renegotiating Identities
Mod. Justine Feyereisen (Ghent University)
Jasmine Togo Brisby
Antonia Wimbush (University of Liverpool), French Caribbean Writing: A Creole Feminine Identity
10h15 – 10h45
Interview by Pelumi Odubanjo with Ingrid Pollard
11h – 12h
Panel #2 Interrogating the Tropes
Mod. Elisa Moris Vai
Amanda Tavares (University of Sheffield), Passeuses de mémoire: Fluid and Fragmented Memories in Zineb Sedira’s Transmettre en Abyme
Mohini Chandra (Plymouth College of Art)
13h - 13h30
Interview by Elisa Moris Vai with Heather Agyepong
13h30 - 15h
Panel #3 Resisting, Inventing, Empowering
Mod. Justine Feyereisen (Ghent University)
Kama La Mackerel, Interstices: Towards a Decolonial Trans Poetics of the Future
Deniz Gundogan Ibrisim (Sabancı University), The Poetics and Politics of Memory-Making and Cosmological Storytelling in Aminatta Forna and Phatsimo Sunstrum
Fabienne Viala (University of Warwick), Postmemory and Female Transmissions in Caribbean Performative Arts
15h - 16h
Keynote Speech
Mod. Justine Feyereisen and Elisa Moris Vai
Deborah Willis (New York University – Tisch School of the Arts)
16h15 - 17h45
Panel #4 Memory-Making: From Personal to Political
Mod. Coraline Jortay (Queen’s College, Oxford)
Erika Tan (University of the Arts London), My Mother Told Me/STUFF
Emma Parker (Keele University), Collages, Photographs and Colonialism in Contemporary Life Writing
Jenni Ramone (Nottingham Trent University), Looking Back to Move Forwards: Memories of Books and Reading in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day (1980) and Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (2016)
17h45 - 18h
Close
Justine Feyereisen and Elisa Moris Vai
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Contact Information:
Justine Feyereisen, jfeyerei@gmail.com
Elisa Moris Vai, elisa@elisamorisvai.com