Pitt to Host International Conference on Comparative Postcolonialities: Aesthetics, History, Locality, Oct. 27-29

PITTSBURGH-The University of Pittsburgh's Department of English will host an international conference on postcolonial studies, titled Comparative Postcolonialities: Aesthetics, History, Locality, from Oct. 27 to 29. Conference participants will examine how postcolonial scholarship can overcome its critics and move forward.

Keynote speakers are Kumkum Sangari, Vilas Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Robert J.C. Young, professor of English at New York University, whose addresses are titled " 'Culture': Name/Place/Practice" and "Asylum Seekers, Starring Walter Benjamin," respectively.

There will be various panels on such topics as "Continuing Colonialisms," "Emergent Areas in Postcolonial Studies," and "Comparative Postcolonial Visual Cultures." These will include an art historian, filmmaker, film theorist, curator, and performance theorist. In addition, "An Evening of Readings" will feature creative writers Jean Binta Breeze of Britain and Jamaica, Nuruddin Farah of Somalia, Medbh McGuckian of Ireland, Jean Said Makdisi of Lebanon, Boubacar Boris Diop of Senegal, Luiza Franco Moreira of Brazil and the United States, and Fiona Cheong of Singapore and the United States.

Shalini Puri, Pitt associate professor of English, is the conference convener. Primary sponsors are Pitt's Department of English, University Center for International Studies, and various departments and programs in the School of Arts and Sciences.

For more information, visit www.english.pitt.edu/events/pococonf/index.html or email pococonf@pitt.edu or call 412-624-2824.

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10/19/05/tmw