Colonial toxicity and ecologies of empire
Buckingham House, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, CB3 0DF23 May 2025
9.00-9.30: arrivals / coffee
9.30-10.15: keynote 1
Aedín Ní Loingsigh (Stirling)
Toxic lines: tracing patterns of land management from colonised landscapes to remembrement in rural France
10.15-11.15: session 1
Hanna Bechiche (Cambridge)
Ethics and aesthetics of the femme-terre: an ecofeminist reading of Malika Mokeddem’s N’zid (2001) and Le siècle des sauterelles (1991)
Naziha Hamidouche (Bath)
When the assassination of knowledge equals the death of nature in Algeria: an investigative reading of Assia Djebar’s Le blanc de l’Algerie (1995) through Françoise Vergès’s Making the World Clean (2024)
11.15-11.45: tea/coffee
11.45-1.15: session 2
Leyla Chery (Cambridge)
Rewriting Catastrophe: Planetary Collapse in Frankétienne’s Mélovivi ou le piège (Yon Planèt Dekonstonbre)
Jessica Louison (Southampton)
From Trauma to Resilience: An Anthropological Study of Chlordecone in Martinique
Emily Kelly (Cambridge)
Disordering the Plantationocene in Muriel Tramis’ Freedom: Les Guerriers de l’Ombre
1.15-2.15: lunch
2.15-3.45: session 3
Israel Eweka (Birmingham)
Île aux Acacias: Fertility and the postcolonial space in Kossi Efoui’s Cantique de l’Acacia
Sean Hardy (Lyon 2)
Poisoned Bodies, Digestive Rituals: Contemporary French stagings of ecological and colonial entanglements
Sophie Marie Niang (Cambridge)
Iboga in Fontainebleau: Postcolonial ecologies of the Hexagon in Seynabou Sonko’s Djinns
3.45-4.15: tea/coffee
4.15-5.00: keynote 2
Clare Finburgh Delijani (Goldsmiths)
“Une noueuse unité primitive”. Ecological Resistance and Repair in the Caribbean5.00-6.00:
