Conference Program
2014 John Douglas Taylor Conference: Contemporary Orientations in African Cultural Studies
May 30 – June 1st, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
Day 1
Friday, May 30th, 2014
10:00 – 11:30: Registrations
11:30 – 13:00: Venue:KTH 104
Welcoming Words, Dr. Peter Walmsley, Chair, Department of English and Cultural Studies, Faculty of the Humanities, McMaster University
Chair: Sarah D’Adamo
Opening Keynote: Handel Kashope Wright, University of British Columbia. Paper Title: “What Has African Cultural Studies Done For You Lately? Autobiographical, Glocal and Intellectual Considerations of a Floating Signifier”
13:00 – 14:00: Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:30: Sessions 1
15:30 – 15:45: Coffee Break
15:45 – 17:15: Sessions 2
19:00: Film Screening
Day 2
Saturday, May 31st, 2014
9:00 – 10:00: Venue:KTH 104
Chair: Bonny Ibhawoh
Keynote: Pumla Dineo Gqola, University of the Witwatersrand. Paper title: “Uncontained bodies: The new South African woman, Lebo Mashile and the True Love magazine photoshop saga”
10:00 – 10:15: Coffee Break
10:15 – 11:45: Sessions 3
11:45 – 12:00: Coffee Break
12:00 – 13:30: Sessions 4
13:30 – 14:30: Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:30: Sessions 5
15:30 – 16:00: Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:00: Venue:KTH 104
Chair: Sarah Olutola
Keynote: Tsitsi Dangarembga
19:00: Conference Banquet
Day 3
Sunday, June 1, 2014
9:00 – 10:30: Sessions 6
10:30 – 10:45: Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:15: Session 7
12:15 – 12:30: Coffee Break
12:30 – 13:30: Venue:KTH 104
Chair: Jesse Arseneault
Closing Keynote: Sarah Nuttall, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. Paper Title: “A New Agenda for Cultural Studies in South Africa”
Session Details
Sessions 1: Friday, May 30th, 2014
1.1Affective Archives
Venue: KTH 107
Chair: Jesse Arseneault
– Neville Hoad, “Literary Animism and Kgebetli Moele’s The Book of the Dead: Archives of sexual feeling in crisis”
– Madeleine Hron, “Weep Not & Grow Up, Child: ‘Illegal’ Anti-Sentimentalism in Bulwayo, Adichie & Evaristo”
– Sarah Kastner, “‘To find a meaning, to find resolve’: Archiving Yvonne Vera and her silence about HIVAIDS”
1.2 Feminist Translations
Venue: KTH 106
Chair: Jennifer Schmidt
– Jan-Therese Mendes, “(Re)inventing Africanness in Diaspora: Muslim women and the Project of Belonging”
– Jessie Forsyth, “Africanist and Indigenous Scholarship: A Case for Reconfigured Collaborations”
– Simidele Dosekun, “Post-feminism in Africa: New Sensibilities and Subjectivities”
Sessions 2:
2.1 Queer and Gendered Mobilities
Venue: KTH 107
Chair: Meg Samuelson
– Julie Cairnie, “Reading Running”
– Nesochi Chinwuba, “Who Born You! Queer African Men in Diaspora and the Development of their Cultural Sexual Identity”
– Leslie Allin, “Re-Envisioning Liberian Masculinity: Joseph Walter’s Guanya Pau”
2.2 Power, Politics and Social Change
Venue: KTH 106
Chair: Sarah Olutola
– Arua Oko Omaka, “Negotiating Social Change in an African Society: The Edda of Southeastern Nigeria”
– Oheneba Boateng, “South Africa: Towards a Theory of Southern Humanitarianism”
– Terver Akpar, “Power, Politics and Identity: Evolving Majorities and Minorities of Nigeria’s Cultural and Hybrid Pluralisms”
Sessions 3:
3.1 African Youth Cultures
Venue: KTH 107
Chair: Handel Kashope Wright
– Helene Strauss, “‘I Am Mzansi’: Packaged Feelings and Popular Youth Cultures in Contemporary South African Documentary Film”
– Paul Ugor, “Markets, States and Generation: African Youth in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization”
– Allison Mackey “Community/ Connection 2.0: African Youth, Social Media, and the Re-Orientation of Affective Belonging”
3.2 Diasporic Returns
Venue: KTH 106
Chair: Jessie Forsyth
– Camille Isaacs, “We Need a New Language: The Influence of America in the works of Bulawayo and Adiche”
– Chigbo Anyaduba, “Africa and Its Diasporas?”
– Helena Oikarinen-Jabai, “Second generation Finnish Somali youth as cultural mediators”
Sessions 4:
4.1 Race Talk
Venue: KTH 107
Chair: Julie Cairnie
– Thabisani Ndlovu, “‘All Poor Together?’: Race and Stylistics of Begging at Traffic Lights in Johannesburg”
– Chielozana Eze, “Look, a White African: Shifting Conceptions of Culture and Identity in Africa”
– Marthinus Conradie, “New South Africa Speak: Race talk in an undergraduate debate on racialisation in post-apartheid South Africa”
4.2 Art, Activism and Cultural Studies
Venue: KTH 106
Chair: Allison Mackey
– Aidah Naluwbowa and Leslie Robinson, “Art, Agency and African Youth: Toward Decolonizing Research Through Artivism”
– Amatoritsero Ede, “Third Generation African Literature as Failed Social Thought”
– Katherine Karpiak, “‘STRONG’ Women and Resilience in Adichie’s Literary Corpus: Beyond Afro-Pessimism & Optimism”
Session 5:
5.1 Cultural Exchanges across Continents and Oceans
Venue: KTH 107
Chair: Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi
– Meg Samuelson, “Cultural Studies from Littoral Africa: Case Studies from Zanzibar and the South African Beach”
– Sarah Olutola, “Global Madonnas: Contemporary Transnational Adoption as part of Religious Missionary Work in Nigeria.”
– Susan Spearey, “The Limits of Access: Cultural Translation, Ethical Solicitation and the Navigation of Distance in J.T. Rogers’s The Overwhelming”
5.2 Cinematic and Online Africas
Venue: KTH 106
Chair: Diana Mafe
– Manouchka Kelly Labouba, “The essence of African cinema: diverging media ideologies in Sub-Saharan African cinema”
– Anulika Agina, “Nigerian Filmmakers and the construction of a political past (1967-1998)”
– Nicholus Nyika, “Discourses of ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Deliberative democracy or online misogyny?”
Session 6:
6.1 Roundtable: “Beyond the Human: Animality in Contemporary African Contexts”
Venue: KTH 107
Chair: Sarah D’Adamo
– Jesse Arseneault
– Jordan Sheridan
– Nandini Thiyagarajan
6.2 Relational Cultural Imaginaries
Venue: KTH 106
Chair: Paul Ugor
– Stephen Ney and Sana Saidykhan, “Anti-Escapist Novels: New Gambian Texts that Challenge Mobility Myths” (SKYPE – VSEE)
– John Nkengasong, “Imagining the Past: Literary Archaeology and the Construction of the Cameroonian Cultural Text”
Session 7:
7.1 Feminist Afro-futures
Venue: KTH 107
Chair: Pumla Gqola
– Diana Mafe, “Last Hope: The Black Madonna in Children of Men”
– Adwoa Afful, “Itinerant Futures: Afrofuturist Feminism, African Migrant Subjectivities and Black Cultural Production”
– Jennifer Schmidt, ““The Girls Who Don’t Die: Subversions of Gender and Genre in Recent Fiction by Lauren Beukes”
7.2 Education
Venue: KTH 106
Chair: Marthinus Conradie
– Blessing Makwambeni, “Articulating Cultural Studies in the Evaluation of Contemporary Entertainment Education (E-E) Television Drama on HIV and AIDS in Black South African Communities”
– Sarah D’Adamo, “‘Adaptation theory’ and the legacy of colonial education policy”
– Yunusy Ngumbi, “Parental Abandonment and Family Life ‘in between’”
Contemporary Orientations in African Cultural Studies 