Annual Conference 2024
SFPS Annual Conference 2024
Friday 15th November & Saturday 16th November 2024
ILCS Senate House Malet Street London
Registration: To register and pay to attend this conference, please download and complete the registration form as instructed. The deadline for registration is Friday 25th October.
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 | Panel 1B: Borders, Peripheries, Partitions | ||
| 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 | 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 | Matthew Brauer (University of Tennessee), ‘The postcolonial novel and intellectual property law in Algeria’ | 2 | Rene Esterhuyse (University of Oxford), ‘Negotiating borders in Maryse Condé’s Histoire de la femme cannibale’ |
| 3 | Gaëlle de l’Estoille (Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle), ‘Les stratégies littéraires pour lutter contre l’aliénation culturelle impérialiste’ | 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’ |
| Panel 1C: Afterlives and Untidy Endings? | |
| 1 | Doyle Calhoun (University of Cambridge), ‘Ambiguous ends: Slavery after Abolition in the Francosphere’ |
| 2 | Elly Walters (University of Oxford), ‘The Ends of Thread: Empire and Ecology in the Textile Art of Joana Choumali’ |
| 3 | Clare Finburgh Delijani (Goldsmiths, University of London), ‘The Empire Within: Colonial Ghosts and Postcolonial Spectres in Contemporary French Performance’ |
| 4 | Trang Nguyen (University of Manchester), ‘The Present-Absence of the Empire in the Cinematic World of Trần Anh Hùng’ |
12:00-13:30: Lunch Break
13:30-15:30: Parallel Sessions (2)
| Panel 2A | Panel 2B: Sub-Saharan Writing | ||
| 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 (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘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 | Tom Murray (University of York), ‘Decolonial utopias in Abdourahman A. Waberi’s Aux États-Unis d’Afrique (2005) and Léonora Miano’s Rouge Impératrice (2018)’ | 3 | Serigne Seye (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar), ‘Résistance et résurgences de l’Empire dans les fictions politiques de Boubacar Boris Diop’ |
| 4 | David Ventura (Newcastle University), ‘Decolonial Futures: History and histories in Glissant and Fanon’ | 4 | Felisa Vergara Reynolds (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), ’David Diop’s Frère d’Ame: A Post-Colonial Response to WW1’ |
| Panel 2C: Modes of Neocoloniality and Decoloniality | |
| 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: Professor Jennifer Yee (University of Oxford),‘The Endings of Empire: Reading for the (Colonial) Plot’
17:15-18:15: Roundtable: ASCALF + SFPS 35 Years On: Charles Forsdick (University of Cambridge); Mary Gallagher (University College Dublin); Peter Hawkins (University of Bristol); Nicki Hitchcott (University of St Andrews); David Murphy (University of Strathclyde); Dominic Thomas (UCLA)
18:15-19:15: Vin d’honneur, generously sponsored by Liverpool University Press
19:30: Conference Dinner (at delegates’ expense)
DAY 2 – Saturday 16th November 20249:00-11:00 Parallel Sessions (3)
| Panel 3A: The Sociology of Literature: Publishing, Prizes, Institutions | Panel 3B: North Africa 2: Sonic and Visual Cultures | ||
| 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 | Ruth Bush (University of Bristol), ‘African universities and the end(s) of Empire’ | 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 | |
| 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’ |
11:00-11:30: Coffee Break 11:30-13:30: Parallel Sessions (4)
| Panel 4A: North Africa 3: Women, Writing, (Un)Veiling | Panel 4B: Impossible Stories: Breaking Silences in Quebec and the Caribbean | ||
| 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 | |
| 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’ |
13:30-15:00: Lunch14:00-15:00: SFPS Annual General Meeting
| Panel 5A: Erasure, Recovery, Return | Panel 5B: Endings in and Beyond the Plantationocene | ||
| 1 | Yacine Chemssi (University of Pittsburgh), ‘The (Im)Possibility of Return? Towards an idea of Home-Land in Franco-Maghrebi Cinema’ | 1 | Jacqueline Couti (Rice University), ‘Famn Debout et émergence d’un féminisme décolonial dans la Martinique d’après guerre’ |
| 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 | Robert Decker (University of Southern California), ‘The Ends of Josephine: Remediating Antillean History in Graphic Narrative’ |
| 3 | Maika (Chi) Nguyen (University College Dublin), ‘Colonial Nostalgias in the Return Narratives of Dany Laferrière and Anna Moï: The Returnee as Tourist (Guide?)’ | 3 | Philippe LeGoff (University of Warwick), ‘Césaire’s chosification’ |
| 4 | Keithley Woolward (Columbia University), ‘Paying for the end: Archival Censorship and the lingering legacy of Haiti’s debt to France’ | 4 | Jennifer Boum Make (Georgetown University) ‘Colonized Caring in Marie-Célie Agnant’s Le livre d’Emma and Pathways toward Decolonial Care’ |
| Panel 5C: What Happened to the Mothers of the Belgian Empire’s Stolen Children? | |
| 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 | John D. McInally (University of St Andrews), ‘Uncovering the Traces of the Metis’ Mothers’ Ordeals in the Belgian Archives’ |
| 3 | Nicki Hitchcott (University of St Andrews), ‘Critical Fabulations of Métis’ Mothers’ Lives’ |
17:00-17:30: Coffee Break
17:30-18:30: Keynote (2) Adi Saleem (University of Michigan), ‘Antisemitism and Islamophobia: The European Question’18:30: Conference Close
