NEMLA
Philadelphia PA
March 2-5, 2006
due date Sept 1, 2005

Paper proposals are requested for a panel at the Northeast Modern Language
Association Conference to be held in Philadelphia PA on March 2-5, 2006.

West African Representations of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Critics claim that West African literature has ignored the historical
significance of the slave trade in favor of exploring the impact of more
contemporary political phenomena such as colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Recently, however, Rosalind Shaw and Anne Bailey's more anthropological and
historical works have shown that a memory of the slave trade does indeed exist
in the West African imagination through less conventional forms of historical
communication, whether that be through cautionary tales or even through
divination practices. This panel seeks to explore the intersection of these
alternative forms of representation and those representations that we generally
deem more "literary" such as drama, poetry, and fiction. Papers might address
intersections such as the interaction between the historical record and
literary works, the divination tradition as it relates to the recent trend in
West African magical realism, the slave narrative and first person fictional
autobiography, or the incorporation of oral narratives of the trade into
fictional modes of representation, though this is simply a suggestive list.

Please send a one page abstract to Laura Murphy at lmurphy_at_fas.harvard.edu by
September 1st.

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Received on Mon Jun 20 2005 - 10:47:04 EDT