African Literature Association 2008

Chair: Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan-Flint

• Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan-Flint, Film Adaptations of Things Fall Apart: The ‘journey’ so far; What Next?
• Ada Azodo, Indiana University Northwest, Things Fall (“began to fall”) Apart: William Butler Yeats, Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Their Writings.
• Idom T. Inyabri & David L. Imbua, University of Calabar, Nigeria, Where the Rain Began to Beat Us: Memory, Narrativity, and Nationalism: Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun in Perspective relevant to Chinua Achebe’s Narrative Art.
• Florence O. Orabueze, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Leaving a Lasting Monument: The Portrait of African Womanhood Fifty Years After Publication of Things Fall Apart.
• Irene Salami, University of Jos, Nigeria. Wifehood in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Panel: The Female Body, Gender, and Sexuality

Chair: Alessandra Capperdoni, Simon Fraser University

• Moussa Sow, The College of New Jersey, Building the Rebel: The Female Body in Sembene’s Cinema
• Alessandra Capperdoni, Simon Fraser University, Modernity in the Feminine: African Women Writers and the Cultural
• Advice Viriri, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe, “Frailty Thy Name Is Woman”: The Changing African Gendered Context in Post- Independence Zimbabwean Literature

Panel: African and African Diaspora in Dialogue: Kinship, Homeland, Nationalism, and Diaspora Identity

Chair: Lindsey Campbell-Badger, Indiana University, Bloomington

• Prince Kwame ADIKA, Illinois State University, Re-membering Kinship: A Comparative Study of African and African Diasporean Narratives of Return
• Lindsey Campbell-Badger, Indiana University, Bloomington, Constructing Emigration as a Nationalizing Project in Creative writing Works from Cape Verde
• Jessica Hutchins, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, The Use of French Creole in Windward Heights by Maryse Condé
• Solomon O. A. Azumurana, University of Lagos, Complexities of Existence in Selected African and African-American Novels
• Traore Moussa, Illinois State University, The Francophone Diaspora and Africa: Cross-representation

Panel: Exile, Emigration, or Immigration - “Nègres,” “Etrangers»

Chair: Philip Ojo, Agnes Scott College

• Philip Ojo, Agnes Scott College, “Nègres,” “Etrangers,” “D’Où-êtes-vous?,” Rentrez chez vous! …”: Different Contexts, Identical Challenges of Otherness in Selected Francophone African Narratives of Migration and Exile
• Michael Ugarte, University of Missouri-Columbia, Out of Africa to Spain: Exile, Emigration, or Immigration

Panel: Resistance, Struggle, Metamorphosis and African and African Diaspora Writing and Films

Chair: Kirsten Hemmy, Johnson C. Smith University

• Evelyne Delgado-Norris, Chicago State University, Song, Poetry, and Resistance in the Works of Kiné Kirama Fall
• Gretchen Elizabeth Kellough, Northwestern University, Changing Urban Identities: Changing Feminine Communities in the Works of Nigerian Author Buchi Emecheta
• Kirsten Hemmy, Johnson C. Smith University, Female Freedom Fighter: The Case of Emma Brown

Opening Session

Welcome Address by WIU President Al Goldfarb, Macomb Mayor Mick Wisslead, Provost Jack Thomas, and CAS Dean Inessa Levi, Senator John Sullivan, Representative Rich Myers

• African Art Exhibition by Ibiyinka Alao
• African Drumming by Adebisi Akande
• Performance by Alhaji Pappa Susso

Sherman Hall Auditorium, 3rd Floor

TRACALA LAUNCH LUNCHEON (Box Lunch)

Inaugural Speaker: Paul Bandia, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Technology Presentation I: Digitally connected globe: African literature, culture and performance

Chair: Mark L Lilleleht, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mohammed Hamid Mohammed, Intel
Digital Harambe: Telling African Stories in 0’s and 1’s to a Generation of Netters

Spoon River College Hospitality Room

Coffee and Cookies

Panel: Traumatic Representations I

Chair: Rebekah Hurt, University of Birmingham, UK

• Rebekah Hurt, University of Birmingham, UK, Political Implications of the Representations of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun
• Mary Jane Androne, Albright College, Black Skin Splitting: Bodies in Dangarembga’s The Book of Not
• Kirk Sides, University of California, Los Angeles, The Politics of Telling: Nationalism, Exile, and Comparative Trauma in African Literature

Roundtable: The Vision and Mission of Ezenwa-Ohaeto

Co-Chairs: J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada, Abia State University and Remi Raji-Oyelade, University of Ibadan

• Niyi Osundare, University of New Orleans
• Tanure Ojaide, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• Livinus Odozor, University of Illinois at Springfield
• Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah, Western Illinois University
• Obi Nwakamma, St. Louis University, Missouri
• Esiaba Irobi, Ohio University, Athens
• Remi Raji-Oyelade, University of Ibadan
• Maik Nwosu, University of Denver, Colorado

Writers Panel I (Northwestern University Program of African Studies 60th Anniversary Panel): Africana Writers – Home and Exile!

Co-Chairs: George Elliott Clarke, University of Toronto Sandra Richards, Northwestern University

• Abena Busia
• Gabeba Baderoon
• Chika Unigwe
• Niyi Osundare
• Isidore Okpewho
• Tanure Ojaide
• Kofi Anyidoho
• Olu Obafemi
• Akachi Ezeigbo
• George Elliott Clarke

Roundtable: Things Fall Apart 50th Anniversary: Chinua Achebe’s Legacies as an African Writer

Chair: Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan-Flint

• Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas at Austin, Teaching Things Fall Apart in Texas
• Francis Sidney Ibe Mogu, University of Swaziland, Southern Africa, Things Fall Apart Across Cultures: The Universal Significance of Achebe's 1958 Reconstruction of the African Heritage
• Abiola Irele—Harvard University
• Isidore Okpewho—SUNY, Binghamton
• Tanure Ojaide,   University of North Carolina, Charlotte
• Anthonia Kalu---Univ. of Northern Colorado, Greeley
• Chimalum Nwankwo—North Carolina A & T University
• Camillus Ukah—Chairman, Association of Nigerian Authors, Imo State Branch.

Roundtable: What’s Wrong with Human Rights Film – Part One

Chair: Eileen Julien, Indiana University

• Chiwengo Ngwarsungu, Creighton University
• Saul Steier, San Francisco State University
• Maureen Eke, University of Central Michigan
• Jane Bryce, University of the West Indies

Sembene Ousmane Memorial Lectures I
Lecture Title: Re-Engaging the Humanities in the Age of Globalization: Ousmane Sembene-Humanist, Global Citizen

Chair: Andrew Lian, Western Illinois University

Lecturer: Obioma Nnaemeka, Indiana University, Indianapolis.

Panel: Religion, Society and Critical Purview

Chair: Debora Yvon Fonteneau, Savana State University

• Debora Yvon Fonteneau, Savana State University, Religious Patrimony and Feminist Discourse in Sembene Ousmane’s Xala and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter
• Abubakr Ya’qub Imam, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, Conflicts Between Religion and Culture in an African Society: A Critical Analysis of Ibrahim Tahir’s The Last Imam

Panel: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: 50 Years After – Part Two

Chair: Ernest N. Emenyonu, University of Michigan-Flint

• Helen Chukwuma, Jackson State University, Mississippi, The Woman’s Past: Portrait of Womanhood in Things Fall Apart
• Blessing Ogamba, The Portrayal of Womanhood in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Akachi Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones
• Iniobong I. Uko, University of Uyo, Female Sexuality in the 21st Century African Literature: A Study of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes
• Omotayo, Olatubosun Tope—Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijebu Ode, Nigeria, Appraisal of Traditional Welfare Practice: A Review of Things Fall Apart

Panel: Traumatic Representations II

Chair: Pius Adesanmi, Carleton University

• Anaele Charles Ihuoma, Nigeria, A CRUSH ON THEIR CROSS: Adolescent Turmoil, Family Sensibility and Pseudo-history in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Bonn Nwabueze Asiegbu, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, In My Father’s House: Domestic Violence in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions
• J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada, Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria, Daughteronomy: Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Domestic Amazons and Patriachal Assumptions in Children of the Eagle

Panel: (Up) Rootedness and Globalization: A Paradox in Contemporary Francophone Women Writing

Chair: Christopher Bolander, Marquette University

• Christopher Bolander, Marquette University, But is it French? Teaching Mercédès Fouda’s Je Parle Camerounais
• Fara Rabenarivo, University of Iowa, Heading Down the Path Towards Questioning Collective Memory in Michèle Rakotoson’s Lalana
• Molly Krueger Enz, South Dakota State University, Isolation and Alienation in the Metropole: The Search for Identity in Gisèle Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia

Workshop: African Literature Resources for Teaching – Part One

Moderator: Jim LaPrad, Western Illinois University

Showing “Africa: A Triple Heritage” by Ali Mazrui

Writers Panel II: Fiction Reading

Chair: Olabisi Gwamna, Iowa Wesleyan

• Olabisi Gwamna, Iowa Wesleyan College, Reading from Dancing with Shadows and Other Stories
• Augustine Bukenya, Makerere University, Uganda, Two Stories by Austin Bukenya: The Mermaid of Msambweni and Years From Hence: The Two Doors
• Okey Ndibe, Trinity College, Foreign Gods, Incorporated
• Chika Unigwe, Turnhout, Belgium, Excerpts from On Black Sister Street; The Day Independence Came; Borrowed Smile; On the Train to Leuven; Re-Growing my Hair; Baptism by Fire; The Scent of My Childhood

Panel: Translating African Literature/African Literature in Translation

Chair: Natasha Himmelman, University of Cape Town

• Peter Wuteh Vakunta, University of Wisconsin-Madison, The African Palimpsest: Translation in the European African Text
• Harry Garuba, University of Cape Town, Is There a Text in African Literature (in English)?
• Evan Maina Mwangi, Northwestern University, Translation and the Gender of Optimism in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Matigari
• Natasha Himmelman, University of Cape Town, Translating Translations: A Study of Ngugi’s Matigari in English and Spanish
• Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Kenyan Writer, The Task of The African Translator

Panel: Patterns of Womanist Agenda in African/Black Diaspora Literature: A Comparative Approach (WIU Graduate Papers in AAS/WS 536 “Graduate Colloquium in Feminist/Womanist Theory”)

Chair: Safoura Boukari

• Kandy Partida, Western Illinois University, Contemporary Problems of Family Life in Second Class Citizen
• Angelique Pass, Western Illinois University, Color Complex Patterns in Young Black Women & Character Development in Toni Morison’s The Bluest Eye
• Ladonya Hughes, Western Illinois University, Patterns of Womanist Agenda and female character Depictions in Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie
• Shantrelle Haymon, Western Illinois University, Womanist Expressions in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston

Panel: Publishing African Writers, Scholars and Cultural Material

Co-Chairs: Ato Quayson, University of Toronto; Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, University of Illinois - Chicago

• Kassahun Checole, Africa World Press & Red Sea Press, Trenton, NJ, USA
• James Currey, James Currey Publishers, Oxford, UK
• Haki Madhibuti, Third World Press, Chicago, USA

Open Folktale Performances, Poetry Readings

Performer and Facilitator: Regina Yaou, Ivory Coast, West Africa (open to all interested performers, poets – as audience and narrators)

Monologues and readings from selected African Diaspora Women playwrights

Director, Tamera Izlar, Howard University