8.30-9.30 Registration (in front of “Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
9.30-10.00 Welcome and opening remarks (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
10.00-11.00 PLENARY SESSION
(“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Pilar Cuder-Domínguez (University of Huelva, Spain)
- Alison Donnell (University of Reading, UK), “Nowness & Africa in Anglophone Caribbean Literature: A Queer Time and Place”
11.00-11.30 Coffee break
11.30-13.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 1A (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
“Africa in Black British Women’s Neo-Slave Narratives”
Chairs: Elisabeth Bekers (Free University of Brussels VUB, Belgium) and Ole Birk Laursen (Independent Scholar)
- Ole Birk Laursen (Independent Scholar), “Before Slavery: Untold Stories in Andrea Levy’s Fiction”
- Sheila Albalate Rivera (University of Huelva, Spain), “Afrocentrism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots”
- Elisabeth Bekers (Free University of Brussels VUB, Belgium), “Imaginary Africas in the Fiction of Malorie Blackman and Bernardine Evaristo”
SESSION 1B (Room S50, building A4)
Chair: Christine Levecq (Kettering University, Flint MI, USA)
- Serena Guarracino (University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy), “Africa as Voices and Vibes: Musical Routes Home in Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda and Toni Morrison’s Desdemona”
- Aparajita Nanda (University of California, Berkeley, USA), “The Diasporic Haunting of Africa in Toni Morrison’s Home”
- Maja Milatovic (University of Edinburgh, UK), “Stitching Herstories: Ancestral Presence and the Metaphor of Quilting in African American Women’s Contemporary Literature”
13.00-14.30 Lunch (“Salle des Professeurs”, building A1)
14.30-16.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 2A (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
“The Denial and Embrace of Africa in the Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora”
Chair: Judith Misrahi-Barak (Paul Valéry University Montpellier 3, France)
- Kathleen Gyssels (University of Antwerp, Belgium), “‘The Africa they ransacked / the Africa they robbed me of’: Damas’ Vindication of His (M)Otherland and the Restitution of Its Heritage”
- Christine Pagnoulle (University of Liège, Belgium), “Razziaed Memories, Proud Re-membering: Africa in Damas and Brathwaite”
- Marcia Carlson (University of Antwerp, Belgium), “Background of the Background: Africa in the Works of Chancy, Danticat and Cruz”
SESSION 2B (Room R50, building A4)“New Nigerian Writing”
Chair: Dave Gunning (University of Birmingham, UK)
- Daria Tunca (University of Liège, Belgium), “‘With love for my people’: Chika Unigwe’s Night Dancer”
- Madhu Krishnan (University of Newcastle, UK), “Cosmopolitanism, Alienation and the Open City”
- Minna Niemi (University of Turku, Finland), “Representing the Niger Delta Crisis: Helon Habila’s Oil on Water and the Question of Resistance without Exoticization”
SESSION 2C (Room R30, building A4)Chair: Manuela Coppola (University of Calabria & University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy)
- Christine Levecq (Kettering University, Flint MI, USA), “Between Disgust and Nostalgia: African American Myths of Africa”
- Annie Gagiano (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa), “Narrative Assessments of African Societies in Five Diasporic Novels”
- Katrin Berndt (University of Bremen, Germany), “Repercussions of Loss: The Continuing Presence of the Past in Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation and Aminatta Forna’s Ancestor Stones”
16.00-16.30 Coffee break
16.30-17.30 PLENARY SESSION (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Elisabeth Bekers (Free University of Brussels VUB, Belgium)
- Chika Unigwe, “Writing Africa in Belgium”
17.30-18.00 PLENARY SESSION (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Caryl Phillips
- Johny Pitts, “An Afropean Odyssey: A Black European Travel Narrative”
18.00-19.30 Photo exhibition (entrance hall, building A1) and opening reception (“Salle des Professeurs”, building A1)
19.30 Conference dinner #1 , at “Le Méchoui chez Rabah”, Chaussée de Prés, 15, 4020 Liège
9.30-11.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 3A (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Rebecca Ashworth (University of Liège, Belgium)
- Zeinab McHeimech (Western University, London ON, Canada), “Sacred Whispers: Hearing Islam in Omar’s Life and Morrison’s Song of Solomon”
- Rachel Thompson (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK), “Representations of Africa: Guinea, Voodoo and Ancestry in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory”
- Christopher Ouma (University of Cape Town, South Africa), “The Racialised Abiku in Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl”
SESSION 3B (Room S50, building A4)
Chair: Madhu Krishnan (University of Newcastle, UK)
- Igor Maver (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), “In Search of Self and Nigeria in the Open City of New York”
- Elena Rodríguez Murphy (University of Salamanca, Spain), “Translating Afropolitanism in New Nigerian Writing: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing around Your Neck”
- Sigrun Meinig (University of Dresden, Germany), “‘I know this isn’t my country. But it is my job’: A State of Dissociation and the Literary Practice of Psychiatry”
SESSION 3C (Room R30, building A4)
Chair: Katrin Berndt (University of Bremen, Germany)
- Ágnes Györke (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary), “Africanness and the Nigerian Diaspora in Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen”
- Juliet Tenshak (University of Stirling, UK), “Identity and Political Struggle during the Time of Adjustment in Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel”
- Véronique Bragard (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium), “Congo’s Hunger Pangs and Snake-Like Resistance in Koli Jean Bofane’s Mathématiques congolaises”
11.00-11.30 Coffee break
11.30-12.30 PLENARY SESSION (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Shauna Morgan Kirlew (Howard University, Washington DC, USA)
- Louis Chude-Sokei (University of Washington, Seattle, USA), “The Newly-Black Americans: Africans, Immigrants and African-Americans”
12.30-14.00 Lunch
14.00-16.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 4A (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Serena Guarracino (University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy)
- Genevieve Hyacinthe (Purchase College, State University of New York, USA), “‘Come Sit in the Dust’, Gesture and Trace of the Diaspora Body in Inland Space: Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series and Bakary Diallo’s ‘Light’ and ‘Maternal Leaves’”
- Sarah Fila-Bakabadio (University of Cergy-Pontoise, France), “The Corporeal Geography of Africa: The Black Body in Contemporary African and African American Photography”
- Sissy Helff (University of Darmstadt, Germany), “Adhering to Silence: Writing Africa from Afar”
- Collette Murray (York University, Toronto, Canada), “African Indigenous Knowledge: Dissemination of West African Dance and Drum, Cultural Commodification and Racism”
SESSION 4B (Room S50, building A4)
Chair: Ole Birk Laursen (Independent Scholar)
- Dobrota Pucherova (Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia), “Critical Reception of Nuruddin Farah at Home and Abroad”
- Dave Gunning (University of Birmingham, UK), “Diaspora as Dissociation: Brian Chikwava’s Harare North”
SESSION 4C (Room R30, building A4)
Chair: Marta Sofia López (University of León, Spain)
- Jawhar Ahmed Dhouib (University of Sfax, Tunisia), “‘Floundering in a place of despair’: The Diasporan Vision of Africa in the Writing of Caryl Phillips”
- Pilar Cuder-Domínguez (University of Huelva, Spain), “Blackness Reconsidered: Africa and Africans in Lawrence Hill’s Fiction”
- Maria Paola Guarducci (University of Rome 3, Italy), “A Country of the Mind: What is Africa to Zoë Wicomb?”
16.00-16.30 Coffee break
16.30-17.30 PLENARY SESSION (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Petra Tournay-Theodotou (European University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus)
- Jackie Kay, “Fantasy Africa”
19.30 Conference dinner #2, at “L'Industrie”, Rue Saint-Gilles, 6, 4000 Liège
9.30-11.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 5A (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
“Representing Africa in the Diasporic Imagination”
Chair: Maggi M. Morehouse (Coastal Carolina University, Conway SC, USA)
- Marta Sofia López (University of León, Spain), “The ‘S Word’: Revisiting Elmina”
- Sharmilla Beezmohun & Nisha Obano (Wasafiri Magazine, London, UK), “The Kiswahili Traveller: Wasafiri’s Long Road of African Writing”
- Judith Misrahi-Barak (Paul Valéry University Montpellier 3, France), “The Stamp of Africa: Duplex Writing in a Few Caribbean Neo-Slave Narratives”
SESSION 5B (Room S100, building A4)
Chair: Christopher Ouma (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
- Asha Varadharajan (Queen’s University, Kingston ON, Canada) & Timothy Wyman-McCarthy (University of Oxford, UK), “Tales of Becoming: The Postcolony and Its Lifeworlds”
- Asis De (Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India), “Dreaming a Transformation of the Nation: Ben Okri’s The Famished Road Sequence”
- Joshua Yu Burnett (Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA), “Red Queen of Niger: Nnedi Okorafor’s Postcolonial, Post-Apocalyptic Africa”
11.00-11.30 Coffee break
11.30-12.30 PLENARY SESSION (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Annalisa Oboe (University of Padua, Italy)
- Louise Yelin (Purchase College, State University of New York, USA), “Robin Rhode: Between Berlin and Johannesburg”
12.30-14.00 Lunch
14.00-16.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 6A (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Valérie Bada (University of Liège, Belgium)
- Manuela Coppola (University of Calabria & University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy), “An Excoriating Legacy: Africa in the Poetry of Patience Agbabi”
- Shauna Morgan Kirlew (Howard University, Washington DC, USA), “‘The New Black’: 21st-century Poetry and the Rise of a Neo-anticolonial Diaspora”
- Mawuena Logan (University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica), “‘Bleaching Out’ Africa: The Phenomenology and Dialectics of Race in the African Diaspora”
- Petra Tournay-Theodotou (European University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus), “Some Connection with the Place: Jackie Kay’s Red Dust Road”
SESSION 6B (Room S100, building A4)
Chair: Véronique Bragard (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium)
- Michael Walonen (Bethune-Cookman University, Daytona Beach FL, USA), “Sedimented Colonialisms and Regendered Spaces in Assia Djebar’s Algeria”
- Delphine Munos (University of Liège, Belgium), “Who’s Afraid of Albert Camus? The Memorialization of French Algeria and the Controversy over Camus’ Legacy”
- Luc Renders (University of Hasselt, Belgium), “Afrikaner, Quo Vadis? The Diaspora in Afrikaans Writing”
- Julia Waters (University of Reading, UK), “Representing African Pasts in Contemporary Mauritian Literature”
16.00-16.30 Coffee break
16.30-17.30 PLENARY SESSION (“Salle du Théâtre”, building A4)
Chair: Louise Yelin (Purchase College, State University of New York, USA)
- Caryl Phillips, “Strangers in a Strange Land”
19.30 Conference dinner #3, at “Le Labo 4”, Quai Van Beneden, 2-22, 4020 Liège
