Forthcoming Events

Current conference program: updated 1 November, 2024

DAY 1 – Friday 15 November 2024

9.00-9.45: Registration, Coffee/Tea

9.45-10.00: Welcome Address, conference organisers: Laura Kennedy and Sonia Lamrani 

10.00-12.00: Parallel Sessions (1) 

	Panel 1A: North Africa 1: Text, Poetics, Property Chair: Patrick Crowley		Panel 1B:  Afterlives and Untidy Endings? Chair:  Leslie Barnes
1	Joseph Richmond (University of Liverpool), ‘Post-independence Moroccan counter-publics: anti-capitalist poetics of the mundane in Abdellatif Laâbi, Hamid El Houadri and Mostafa Nissaboury’	1	Doyle Calhoun (University of Cambridge), ‘Ambiguous ends: Slavery after Abolition in the Francosphere’
2	Matthew Brauer (University of Tennessee), ‘The postcolonial novel and intellectual property law in Algeria’	2	Ruth Bush (University of Bristol), ‘African universities and the end(s) of Empire‘
3	Gaëlle de l’Estoille (Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle), ‘Les stratégies littéraires pour lutter contre l’aliénation culturelle impérialiste’	3	Trang Nguyen (University of Manchester), ‘The Present-Absence of the Empire in the Cinematic World of Trần Anh Hùng’
4	Rebekah Vince (Queen Mary University of London), ‘“Juivarabe” as Postcolonial Pariah: Sophie Bessis’ Dedans, dehors and Lettre à Hannah Arendt’

	Panel 1C: Borders, Peripheries, Partitions Chair: Martin Munro
1	Miriam Gordon (University of Warwick), ‘French State presence on the margins of urban Fort-de-France: Alfred Alexandre’s Bord de Canal and Les villes assassines’
2	René Esterhuyse (University of Oxford), ‘Negotiating borders in Maryse Condé’s Histoire de la femme cannibale’
3	Ian Nixon (University of Warwick), ‘Partitioning of memory in Faïza Guène’s Un homme ça ne pleure pas and Alice Zeniter’s L’Art de perdre’

12:00-13:30: Lunch Break 

13:30-15:30: Parallel Sessions (2) 

	Panel 2A: Endings and Beyond: Towards the Future Chair: Aedín Ní Loingsigh		Panel 2B: Sub-Saharan Writing Chair: David Murphy
1	Fraser McQueen (University of Bristol), ‘Towards a Decolonial Utopianism in Mehdi Meklat and adroudine Saïd Abdallah’s Minute’	1	Guillaume de Broux (Northwestern University), ‘Flirting with Alienation: Aesthetics and Politics in Sembène’s Black Girl’
2	Laura Kennedy (University College Cork), ‘Transcending Colonial Legacies: Afrofuturism in Contemporary French Caribbean Literature’	2	Lucien Bindi (Université de Ngaoundéré), ‘De l’Afrique subsaharienne à la Palestine : la nécropolitique dans quelques romans’
3	David Ventura (Newcastle University), ‘Decolonial Futures: History and histories in Glissant and Fanon’	3	Serigne Seye (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar), ‘Résistance et résurgences de l’Empire dans les fictions politiques de Boubacar Boris Diop’
		4	Felisa Vergara Reynolds (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), David Diop’s Frère d’Ame: A Post-Colonial Response to WW1’

	Panel 2 C: Modes of Neocoloniality and Decoloniality Chair: Kate Hodgson
1	Nicholas Strole (University of Melbourne), ‘Neocolonial Precarity: Power, Space, and Immunity in the Theatre of Bernard-Marie Koltès’
2	Roxanna Curto (University of Iowa), ‘Colonialism, Decolonization, and the Olympics in Francophone Africa’
3	Leslie Barnes (Australian National University), ‘Empires Loved and Lost: Michel Houellebecq’s Plateforme’

15:30-16:00: Coffee Break

16:00-17:00: Keynote 1 – The Dorothy Blair Memorial Lecture: Professor Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford), ‘The Endings of Empire: Reading for the (Colonial) Plot’. Chair: Nicki Hitchcott

17:15-18:15:   Roundtable: ASCALF + SFPS 35 Years On. Chair: Maeve McCusker. Peter Hawkins (University of Bristol); Mary Gallagher (University College Dublin); Nicki Hitchcott (University of St Andrews); Dominic Thomas (UCLA); Charles Forsdick (University of Cambridge); David Murphy (University of Strathclyde)

18:15-19:15: Vin d’honneur, generously sponsored by Liverpool University Press

19:30:  Conference Dinner (at delegates’ expense)

DAY 2 – Saturday 16^th November 2024

9:00-11:00 Parallel Sessions (3)

	Panel 3A: Sociology of Literature: Publishing, Prizes, Institutions Chair: Fraser McQueen		Panel 3B: North Africa 2: Sonic and Visual Cultures Chair: Sonia Lamrani
1	Clara Défachel (University of St Andrews), ‘The End(s) of the French Publishing Empire? Cultural diplomacy, co-edition and literary translation ‘entre les deux rives’’	1	Ryan Schaller (UCLA), ‘Leïla Sebbar, Marc Garanger, and the Memorial Politics of Photography’
2	Chris Hogarth (University of Bristol), ‘Decolonising Publishing Practices in Francophone African literature? The case of Senegal and translingual texts’	2	Mani Sharpe (University of Leeds), ‘Settler Cinema and the End of the French Empire in Algeria’
3	Rosa Beunel-Fogarty (King’s College London), ‘And the winner is? Francophone Literary Prizes in Indian Ocean Archipelagos’	3	Honorine Rouiller (Vanderbilt University), ‘The End of French-Algeria: Celebrating the Liberation’
		4	Emilie Pons (University of Oregon), ‘The Postcolonial Politics of Cassettes in Modern Raï: A New French Soundscape of Algerian Exile’

	Panel 3C:  Islands at the End of Empire Chair: Charles Forsdick
1	Sophie Fuggle (Nottingham Trent University), Jonathan Lewis (Bangor University), ‘Apolitique et utopique’: The colonial prison island at the end of empire’
2	Antonia Wimbush (University of Melbourne), ‘Monuments, Memorials, and the Martinican Memoryscape’
3	Robert Blackwood (University of Liverpool), ‘Memorialisation, museums, and Linguistic Landscapes: neo-colonial French island settings’
4	Robert Decker (University of Southern California), ‘The Ends of Josephine: Remediating Antillean History in Graphic Narrative’

11:00-11:30: Coffee Break 

11:30-13:30: Parallel Sessions (4)  

	Panel 4A: North Africa 3: Women, Writing, (Un)Veiling Chair: Honorine Rouiller		Panel 4B:  Impossible Stories: Breaking Silences in Quebec and the Caribbean Chair: Antonia Wimbush
1	Naziha Hamidouche (University of Bath), ‘Indigenous Approaches to Dealing with Colonial Legacy: Reading Assia Djebar’s Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (1980) and Louisa Yousfi’s Rester barbare (2022)’	1	Martin Munro (Florida State University), ‘Columbus’ Gaze, Pineau’s Camera, and the Echo-monde of Naomi Fontaine’
2	Sonia Lamrani (University of Birmingham), ‘Expressing Postcolonial Linguistic Identities in Assia Djebar’s writings’	2	Timothy Lomeli (Florida State University), ‘Combating Colonial Trauma in Gisèle Pineau’s La vie privée d’oubli’
3	Ikram Bennai (University of Manchester), ‘Veiled Histories: Unveiling Algerian Women in French Colonial Discourse and Policy (1830 – 1962)’	3	Mehdi Chalmers (Florida State University), ‘Mains et Tambours à fleur de peau: Les métaphores de l’épiderme dans Kuessipan de Naomi Fontaine’
4	Erin Twohig (Georgetown University), ‘Carthage and the Perennity of Empire in Fawzi Mellah’s Elissa, la reine vagabonde’	4	Carine Schermann (Florida State University), ‘Adrienne’s Free Hands: Palimpsests in Gisèle Pineau’s Ady, soleil noir’

	Panel 4C: Revolution, Resistance, Revolt Chair: Charles Forsdick
1	Adlai Murdoch (Penn State University), ‘What’s in a Name? That Which We Call an Empire by Any Other Word…’
2	Andy Stafford (University of Leeds), ‘Staging a Revolution? Auguste Macouba’s 1968 Play on Martinique’s Uprising of December 1959’
3	Valentin Duquet (Rice University), ‘“The French are the Salt of the Earth”: Resistance, Revolution and Religiosity in Jean Amrouche’s Writings’

13:30-14:30: Lunch and SFPS Annual General Meeting

14:30-16:00: Parallel Sessions (5)

	Panel 5A: Erasure, Recovery, Return   Chair: Laura Kennedy			Panel 5B: What Happened to the Mothers of the Belgian Empire’s Stolen Children?  Chair: Aedín Ni Loingsigh
1	Yacine Chemssi (University of Pittsburgh), ‘The (Im)Possibility of Return? Towards an idea of Home-Land in Franco-Maghrebi Cinema’		1	Alice U. Karekezi (University of Rwanda), ‘Peruse Kagaju: Reclaiming Motherhood, Undoing the Conspiracy between the Belgian Colonial Administration and the Catholic Church in Rwanda’
2	Patrick Crowley (University of Galway), ‘The End(s) of Empire: Erasure and Epistemologies of Recovery with Jean-Paul Kauffmann and Annina van Neel’		2	John D. McInally (University of St Andrews), ‘Uncovering the Traces of the Metis’ Mothers’ Ordeals in the Belgian Archives’
3	Keithley Woolward (Columbia University), ‘Paying for the end: Archival Censorship and the lingering legacy of Haiti’s debt to France’		3	Nicki Hitchcott (University of St Andrews), ‘Critical Fabulations of Métis Mothers’ Lives’

	Panel 5C: Endings in and Beyond the Plantationocene Chair: Mary Gallagher
1	Jacqueline Couti (Rice University), ‘Famn Debout et émergence d’un féminisme décolonial dans la Martinique d’après guerre’
2	Jennifer Boum Make (Georgetown University) ‘Colonized Caring in Marie-Célie Agnant’s Le Livre d’Emma and Pathways toward Decolonial Care’
3	Philippe LeGoff (University of Warwick), ‘Césaire’s chosification’

16:00-17:00: Remembering Celia Britton: with Maeve McCusker, MaryGallagher, Michael Syrotinski, Martin Munro, Charles Forsdick, James Agar, Kate Hodgson. Wine reception generously sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, UCL.

17:00-18:00: Keynote 2 – The Kate Marsh Memorial Lecture: Adi Saleem (University of Michigan), ‘Antisemitism and Islamophobia: The European Question’. Chair: Sarah Arens

18:00: Conference Close