African Literature Association 2008

Writers’ Roundtable I: Writing in the Mother Land: Women Writers of the Global Century who have remained at Home

Co-Chairs: Niyi Osundare and Abena Busia

• Toyin Adewale-Gabriel
• Mariama Barry
• MarièTou mbaye bileoma (Ken Bugul)
• Mabel I. E. Evwierhoma
• Véronique Tadjo
• Akachi Ezeigbo

Panel: Migrations et Immigrations: Mémoires et Pratiques

Chair: Cilas Kemedjio, University of Rochester

• P. Julie Papaionnaou, University of Rochester, Memories of Daily life in Calixthe Beyala’s Les Honneurs perdus
• Ambroise Kom, College of the Holly Cross, Migrations, cultures des cités et constructions identitaires
• Cilas Kemedjio, University of Rochester, Migrations et Immigrations: à partir de la mémoire de l’esclavage

TRACALA Roundtable: Gender and Translation

Chair: Wangui wa Goro, TRACALA President

• Marjoligjin de Jaeger
• Mildred Mortimer
• Keiko Kusunose
• Irene d'Almeida
• Janis Mayes

Panel: Memory, Ritual, and the African Diaspora I

Chair: Saddik M. Gouhar, UAE University, United Arab Emirates

• Ghirmai Negash, Ohio State University, Dedicated to America: Melancholy and Laughter in Zakes Mda’s novel Cion
• Saddik M. Gouhar, UAE University, United Arab Emirates, Confronting the History of Slavery and Colonization in the Poetry of Langston Hughes and Mohamed Al-Fayturi
• Kgomotso M. Masemola, Walter Sisulu University, South Africa, Between the Double Temporality of Tinseltown and Sophiatown: Cultural Memory in Miriam Makeba’s Makeba: My Story and Bloke Modisane’s Blame Me on History

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

Chair: Tanure Ojaide, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

• Umelo Ojinmah, Nasarawa State University, Nigeria, Okonkwo’s Messianic Fixation as a Parody of Colonial induced Hybridization
• Pauline Ada Uwakweh, North Carolina A&T State University, Managing Change and Conflict: Lessons from Things Fall Apart for the Global Village
• Omotayo Olatubosun Tope, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Appraisal of African Traditional Welfare Practice: A Review of Things Fall Apart
• Mariette Njoku, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Deconstructing the Masculine Centre in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
• Shazrah Salam, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan, Reclaiming Herstory- Celebrating The Female Principle Through “Motherlore” in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Workshop: African Literature Resources for Teaching (Part Two)

Moderator: Pius Adesanmi, Carleton University

Presenter: – Ibiyinka Alao, Springfield, MO

Topic: African Art Motives in the Classroom – The African Artist Workshop

Writers Panel III: Immigrant Voices in Short Stories

Chair: Naana Banyiwa-Horne, Santa Fe Community College, Gainesville, Florida

• Folabo Ajayi-Soyinka, Kansas State University, The Scare
• Ada Uzoamaka Azodo, Indiana University Northwest, Rejection
• Tomi Adeaga, Germany, Shattered Dreams
• Naana Banyima Horne, Santa Fe Community College, Gainesville, Florida, PayBack

Panel: Graduate Caucus Panel: African “Metatexts,”

Chair: Emad Mirmotahari, UCLA

• Laura Murphy, Harvard University, “We Shall Make Love With Words”: Ama Ata Aidoo’s Grammar of Memory and Intimacy
• Allison Crumly, University of California, Los Angeles, Consumption and Literary Circulation in Bessora's Les Taches d'encre
• Michele Vialet, University of Cincinnati, The Poetics of Incompleteness in Véronique Tadjo’s L’ombre d’Imana
• Chantal Logan, Eastern Mennonite University, Is writing for the “Other” a predicament of African authors?
• Emad Mirmotahari, University of California, Los Angeles, Revising Revisions: Islam and Gender in Nuruddin Farah’s From a Crooked Rib

Panel: Women and War I

Chair: Sandra Richards, Northwestern University

• Nandini C. Sen, Delhi University, India, Women and War in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra
• Catherine Kroll, Sonoma State University, “Out of bounds in our own reality:” Yvonne Vera’s Restorying of Lost History in The Stone Virgins
• Ifeoma Obi, Anambra State University, Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun: A critical Appraisal of the Language Usage Documenting The Nigerian Civil War

Panel: Popular Culture, Language and Socio-Political Themes in Nollywood Movies

Chair:Onokome Okome, University of Alberta, Canada

• Hope Heghagha, University of Lagos, Nigeria, “Invoking the Dead to Execute Justice”: The Dispossessed and Vengeance Techniques in Three Nollywood Movies
• David Platzer, University of California, Santa Barbara, SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Onitsha Market Literature and Nollywood
• Abayomi Victor Okunowo, University of Colorado at Boulder, Semantic Processes of Gender Implicature and Meaning in Female-Produced Selected Nigerian Movies

Panel: Memory, Ritual, and the African Diaspora II

Chair: Romanus Muoneke, University of St. Thomas, Houston

• Véronique Maisier, Southern Illinois University, Historical hysteria and hysterical history in Caribbean literature
• Toni Pressley-Sanon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Visual Art and Remembrance: An Examination of Contemporary Art from Ouidah, Benin Republic and Haiti
• Amatoritsero Ede, Carleton University, Tied and Dyed: The African Umbilical Cord of Diasporic Cultural production
• Tommie L. Jackson, St. Cloud State University, Edward P. Jones’s The Known World The Slave Narrative Re-visited

WOCALA Panel 1: African Women Writers in Exile

Chair: Arlene Elder, University of Cincinnati

• Chioma Opara, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port Hancourt, Nigeria, A Voice in the Wilderness: Gender, Tradition and Exile in Bessie Head’s The Collector of Treasures
• Blessing Diala-Ogamba, Copping State University, Baltimore, Abuse of Power in Nawal El Saadawi’s The Fall of the Imam and God Dies by the Nile
• Christine Ohale, Chicago State University, The Audacity of Exile: Feminist Consciousness in Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen

Panel: Trans-nationality, Womanhood and Memory in African Cinema

Chair: Andrea Frohne, Ohio University

• Claudia Hoffmann, University of Florida, Representing Subaltern Transnationality in Film: The Illegal African Immigrant in European Cinema
• Andrea Frohne, Ohio University, “Silence is not Golden”: Memory, Ethiopia and Filmmaker Salem Mekuria
• Kari McGriff Miller, Howard University, Realities of Womanhood: Deconstructing Rape and Birth Metaphors in African Film
• Grace Uche Hassan and Regina Kwakye-Opong, University of Ghana, Legon, The Challenges of African Indigenous Film and DVD

Panel: Black Postcolonial Feminists

Chair: Jane Bryce, University of the West Indies

• Jane Bryce, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, “Half and Half children:” Third Generation Women Writers and the New Nigerian Novel
• Naminata Diabate, The University of Texas, Austin, Stiwanist, Misovirist, Womanist, and the Politics of Self-Naming: A Comparative Study of Sub-Saharan Francophone, Anglophone African, and African American Feminist Theories
• Adunni Agnes Joseph, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

TRACALA Panel: Translation in Africa and African Diaspora

Chair: Tomi Adeaga, Germany

• Niyi Afolabi, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, No Longer Literary Maroons: Translating Cadernos Negros/Black Notebooks
• Peter Wuteh Vakunta, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Orality Through Literacy: Translating Oral Narrative into Written Word
• Ousseynou Traore, Williams Paterson University, New Jersey, Igbotics and Transcreation in Things Fall Apart: Creative and Critical Implications
• Mildred Mortimer, University of Colorado, Boulder, Translating Leila Sebbar’s La Seine Etait Rouge and The Question of Gender
• Mark de Brito, African Poetry: The Demarcation of a Field
• Mildred Mortimer, University of Colorado, Boulder, Translating Leila Sebbar's La Seine était rouge and The Question of Gender

Panel: Women’s Memoirs, Travelogues and “Factions”

Chair: Alioune Sow, University of Florida

• Patrick K. Muana, Texas A&M University, Female Spectatorship of the Colonized Body: Anna Maria Falconbridge’s Narrative of Two Voyages to the Rivers of Sierra Leone during the Years 1791-1793
• Alioune Sow, University of Florida, Gainesville, “Nervous confessions”: autobiography, memoirs and reconciliation
• Ken Walibora Waliaula, The Ohio State University, The Female Voice and Narrating Confinement: Wamboi Otieno’s Mau Mau’s Daughter
• Cheryl Sterling, New York University, Can you Really see Through a Squint? Theoretical Underpinnings in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy
• Kerry Vincent, Acadia University, Discrepant Visions: Hilda Kuper’s ‘Factional’ Representations of Swaziland

Roundtable: Writing and Publishing in the Diaspora-Away from Home: African Writers Telling Their Experiences

Chair: Maureen Ngozi Eke, Central Michigan University

• Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Pennsylvania State University, Writing, Publishing, and Breaking Into the American Literary Mainstream
• Frank Chipasula, Southern Illinois University, On Becoming a 'Dangerous Writer' While Dodging the Tyrant's Hit Men
• Gabeba Baderon, Pennsylvania State University, Global Africa: Publishing on the continent and reading in America

Panel: French Language 1 – Films, Theory and Critical Discourse

Chair: Kohoun Bagnini, West Virginia University

• Kohoun Bagnini, West Virginia University, Thomas Sankara au feminine
• Ahmed Bouguarche, California State University, Northridge, Problèmes de femmes dans certains écrits et films francophones 
• Maryann Weber, Missouri Southern State University, Virtual Cinematography in Le Lys et le flamboyant

Panel: Beyond Negritude: Caribbean Women Transforming African Traditions

Chair: Doris Hambuch, Western Illinois University

• Doris Hambuch, Western Illinois University, The feminist elements in Euzhan Palcy’s adaptation of André Brink’s A Dry White Season
• Anne Malena, University of Alberta, Canada, Male tenets of Négritude and how they have been problematized by feminine writings by Condé, Schwarz-Bart and Danticat
• Patricia Krus, University of Stirling, Scotland, The influence of Négritude in the Dutch Caribbean through an analysis of the writing of Astrid Roemer (Suriname)

Writers’ Roundtable II: Contemporary African Poetry

Chair: Tanure Ojaide, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

• Abena Busia
• Ifi Amadiume
• Syl Cheney-Coker
• Naana Horne
• Jack Mapanje
• Lupenga Mphande
• Chimalum Nwankwo
• Tanure Ojaide
• Niyi Osundare
• Tijan M. Sallah
• Kofi Anyidoho

WOCALA Panel 2: Representations of Black Women Characters in African Literature: Cultural and Pedagogical Implications

Chair: Helen Chukwuma, Jackson State University,

• Helen Chukwuma, Jackson State University, Women Historical Antecedents in Literature: Fodder for Female Empowerment
• Akachi Ezeigbo, University of Lagos, Nigeria, Siddon Look or Go-Getter: Generation Gap in Nigerian Women’s Writing
• Angela Fubara, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Figures of Pedagogy in Emecheta’s Double Yoke and Aidoo’s Changes
• Regina Amollo, A Season of Mirth

Panel: Issues in Francophone Writing

Chair: Moradewun Adejunmobi, University of California, Davis

• Wandia Njoya, Pennsylvania State University, The Monster We Must Embrace: Poverty in Aminata Sow Fall’s La Grève des Battus
• Moradewun Adejunmobi, University of California, Davis, Popular Literatures and Popular Literacies in West Africa
• H. Adlai Murdoch, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Writing the “Moi:” Departmentalization and Cultural Identity in the French Caribbean

Panel: Black Women’s Bodily Images

Chair: Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, University of South Africa

• Sola Olorunyomi, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Sex and That Mutant Called “Text”: In Search of the Bodily Literary
• Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, University of South Africa, The Legacy of Sarah Baartman in the Discourse on the Black Body Politic of the 21st Century
• Laura Fish, University of Newcastle, UK, The Black Woman in the Mirror
• Onyeka Iwuchukwu, National Open University of Nigeria, Who Am I? Identity Crises of the Blackwoman in Tess Onwueme’s Riot in Heaven and The Missing Face

Panel: The Promise of a New World: The District Commissioner in African Literature and Cinema

Chair: Onookome Okome, University of Alberta

• Onookome Okome, University of Alberta, The “Other Woman” and the Cinema of Empire: Sanders of the River and Mister Johnson
• Francis Aribia, Cross Rivers University of Science and Technology, Calabar, Nigeria
• Harry Garuba, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• Pius Adesamni, Carlton University, Ottawa, Canada
• Celestine Bassey, University of Calabar, Nigeria

Panel: Women, Patriarchy and Gender

Chair: Shazia Rahman, Western Illinois University

• Donald M. Morales, Mercy College, A Cross Cultural View of Female Characters in Recent Fiction by Roy, Ali, Adichie, Danticat and Smith
• Ramonu Sanusi, George Mason University, Fatou Kéita/Régina Yaou and the Re-definitation of African Cultural and Patriarchal Ethos: Rebelle and Le Prix de la rèvolte
• Joyce Dixon-Fyle, DePauw University, Women, Polygamy and Aids in Contemporary Francophone Fiction. A reading of Sidagamie by Abibatou Traore
• Nonyelum Chibulo Mba, University of Abuja, Nigeria, Women's quest for self-actualization in a patriarchal society: the fiction of Akachi Ezeigbo, Kaine Agary & Tanure Ojaide

Oral Performers and Traditional Metaphors: Why I Sing What I Sing! What I Drum About!

Chair: Adeleke Adeeko, Ohio State University

• Jaigbade Alao, Dadakuada Performer
• Sani Dandawo, Waka Performer
• Adebisi Adeleke, Iyaalu Drummer
• Papa Susso, singer and his traditional African performers group
• Isiaka Ayinla (Alias Easy Kabaka), Were/Fuji performer

African Literature Resources for K-12 Teachers

• Phanuel Egejuru, Loyola University, New Orleans
• Pamela Smith, University of Nebraska, Omaha

TRACALA – General Membership Business Meeting

TRACALA Executive – Wangui wa Goro; Pamela Smith, Tomi Adeaga, Phanuel Egejuru

Performance: Traditional African Guitar

• Olateju Adesida, Northwestern
• Papa Susso, singer and his traditional African performers group
• Isiaka Ayina, Were/Fuji with Adebisi Adeleke, Yoruba drummer

Writers’ Panel IV: Production and Distribution of Writings on/about Africa

Chair: Akin Adesokan, Indiana University, Bloomington

• Akin Adesokan
• Adewale Maja-Pearce
• Patrice Nganang
• Sarah Ladipo Manyika
• Valerie Tagwira
• Chika Unigwe

Panel: The New Challenge and Direction of South African Women Writers seeking for their Cultural Identity

Chair: Thelma Pinto, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

• Keiko Kusunose, Kyoto Seika University, Japan, The new Challenge of Cultural Identity in Zoe Wicomb
• Thelma Pinto, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The New Trends of South African Literature
• Toshiko Sakamoto, Ritumeikan University, Japan, Journey as Metaphor in Nadine Gordimer’s Fiction
• Huma Ibrahim, Zayed University, Gender and Identity in African Literature

Panel: Women’s Rights in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

Chair: Chimalum Nwankwo, North Carolina State A&T University

• P. O. Balogun, University of llorin, Reinvention of Feminist Aesthetics: A Study of Chimammanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus
• Halimat Sekula, Women, Work and Interpersonal Relationships in Contemporary Nigerian Fiction
• ---- Women Right’s Violation as Portrayed in Seffi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come and Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

Panel: Oral Performance Art and Artifact

Chair: Peter D. Quella, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Peter D. Quella, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Theorizing the Oral in African Literature: Two Sesotho Tales and their Written History
• Isiakaka Zubair Aliagan, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, The Communicative and Literary Value of Ilorin Traditional Waka: An Example of Ibrahim Alabi Labaika’s Oral Poetry
• Faleye A. Adeola, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, In-road of Women into Male Dominated Orarure Performances: the Theatrics of Bàrímádé, Fátímò, Àjoké, Ìyábò Ósánlé and Ayó Balógun as Icons
• Fatima Binta Ibrahim, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, INDIGENOUS CHANTS: A Study of the Essence of Enibatati (Fishermen Chants) among the Nupe People of Patigi, Nigeria

Roundtable: Philosophy, Spirituality, and Indigenous Knowledge in Africa – (Panel in European and African Languages – translations available)

Chair: Musbau Ahmed Rufai, City College of Chicago

• AbdulRaheem Ameen
• Papa Susso
• Regina Yaou
• Sani Dandawo
• Imam Ali-agan Busary Abubakar Aliagan
• Musbau Ahmed Rufai

Panel: Theatre for Development, Traditional Metaphors, Artifacts and Art in Africa

Chair: F. Odun Balogun, Delaware State University

• Dale Byam, Brooklyn College, From the corner of the I- The Impeding flight of Papa Bois
• Ann Armstrong Scarboro, Mosaic Media, Boulder, CO, The Fusion of Roots, Artifacts and Art in the Creation of Martinique’s Victor Anicet
• Joy Wrolson, University of Kansas, All Systems Out of Order: Theater for Development or Panic Theatre in Zimbabwe during the Murambatsvina

Panel: The Hazards of Teaching African Literature: African Literature in World and Postcolonial Literature

Chair: Ngwarsungu Chiwengo, Creighton University

• Lokangaka Losambe, University of Vermont, Teaching African Literature as World Literature
• Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka, University of Kansas, Postcolonial Petrified: African Literature in the 21st century
• Felix Ulombe Kaputu, School of Humanities, Purchase College, Teaching African Literature in the American College
• Aaron Eastley, Brigham Young University, Poisonous to Europeans: Henry Stanley and the Contaminated Congo of Heart of Darkness

Panel: Scenes of Algeria: In Honor of Alek Baylee Toumi

Chair: Anne Carlson, Southern Illinois University

• Anne Carlson, Southern Illinois University, De Beauvoir à beau voile: interrogating Algerian women’s rights
• Michèle Chossat, Seton Hill University, From Cultural Dictatorship to Cultural Diversity: Resistance in Toumi’s Work

Panel: On The Abolition of Slavery: A Multi-Genre Literary Approach

Co-Chairs: Eustace Palmer & Abioseh Michael Porter

• Patrick Bernard, Franklin & Marshall College, Magical Realism and History in Syl Cheney-Coker’s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar
• Ernest Cole, University of Connecticut, Lemuel Johnson’s Highlife for Caliban: A Re-Assessment
• Eustace Palmer, Georgia College & State University, Confrontation with his Ancestry: Slavery and the Poetry of Syl Cheney-Coker
• Abioseh Michael Porter, Drexel University, History, Poetry, Fiction, and Film Coming Together to Correct Some Major Lies in Contemporary Form: Human Freedom and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Writers’ Panel V: Sefi Atta, Chimamanda Adieche and Chukwumeka Ike – Readings

Chair: Thelma Pinto, ALA President

Roundtable: Sembene Memorial

Chair: Seletta Boyd

• Seletta Boyd
• Francoise Pfaff
• Ken Harrow
• Manthia Diawara
• Sada Niang
• Mbye Cham
• Abiola Irele

Special Presentation of Ezra

Newton I. Aduaka, 2007— Grand Prize Etalon de Yennega, INALCO Award and UNFPA Award; Humanitas Prize; Best Film award of the Durban Festival & World Premier of Life in Slow Motion (Tunde Kelani, 2008 –- Multi Award Winning Director. Actor in Tears of the Sun (2003), Director of Thunderbolt (2001)

Folktale Performance

Facilitator: Niyi Afolabi, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

(Open to all interested performers)

Performance in Movement and Dance

Liberty in West Africa: Cultural Movements of Independence
Director, Karen Martino, University of Rochester