Pitt Conference on African Novels to Be Held Oct. 26-28

PITTSBURGH-The University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences and Department of English will present a free conference titled African Novels and the Politics of Form from Oct. 26 to 28 in Room 501 Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

More than 20 scholars, some from South Africa and England, will discuss novels written and published in Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese, the major literary languages of Africa. Participants-who have received conference papers in advance allowing for discussion rather than presentation-will address such concepts as realism, modernism, postmodernism, and magical realism. Papers are available on the Web site to all those who preregister.

Conference participants will seek to define the political and aesthetic relationships between African literature written in the European languages and literatures of the colonizing nation themselves, and to move beyond reading African novels only through a thematics of anticolonial resistance, said Susan Z. Andrade, associate professor of English at Pitt and conference convenor.

Conference papers are by Koffi Anyinefa, professor of French at Haverford College; David Attwell, professor of modern literature at the University of York; Nicholas Brown, associate professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Brenda Cooper, professor of English at the University of Cape Town; Eleni Coundouriotis, associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut; Olakunle George, associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Brown University; Simon Gikandi, professor of English at Princeton University; Wail Hassan, associate professor in comparative and world literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Roberta Hatcher, assistant professor of French at Pitt; Ronald Judy, professor of English at Pitt; Luis Madureira, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mohamed-Salah Omri, senior lecturer and director of the Centre for Mediterranean Studies at the University of Exeter; Anjali Prabhu, associate professor of French at Wellesley College; and Raji Vallury, assistant professor of French at The University of New Mexico.

Distinguished interlocutors are Nancy Armstrong, the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Comparative Literature, English, Modern Culture and Media, and Gender Studies at Brown University, and Bruce Robbins, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Field interlocutors are Odile Cazenave, associate professor of French at Boston University; Gaurav Desai, associate professor of English at Tulane University; Eileen Julien, professor of comparative literature at Indiana University; and Tejumola Olaniyan, Louise Durham Mead Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Local participants are Jonathan Arac, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at Pitt; John Beverley, professor of Spanish and Latin American literature and cultural studies at Pitt; Rashmi Bhatnagar, visiting lecturer in Pitt's English department; Paul Bové, Distinguished Professor of English at Pitt; Nancy Condee, director of Pitt's graduate program for cultural studies; Nancy Glazener, associate professor of English at Pitt; Giuseppina Mecchia, associate professor of French and Italian at Pitt; Shalini Puri, associate professor of English at Pitt; William Scott, assistant professor of English at Pitt; and Susan Harris Smith, professor of English at Pitt.

Cosponsors are Pitt's University Center for International Studies, Cultural Studies Program, and Departments of French and Italian Languages and Literatures, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, History, and Africana Studies.

For more information visit www.english.pitt.edu/events/africannovels.

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10/23/06/tmw