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Chinua
Achebe
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The 2014 Achebe
Colloquium on Africa — African Literature as
Restoration: Chinua Achebe as Teacher will be held at Brown University,
Providence,
R.I. USA, from May 1-3, 2014.
An
International gathering of scholars, artists, musicians, writers, and officials
will gather at Brown University May 1-3, 2014, to discuss and celebrate the
cultural contributions of Chinua Achebe, the late Nigerian novelist and the
David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana
studies at Brown, who died in March 2013 at the age of 82. Achebe started
the colloquium in 2009 to bring attention to issues affecting Africa.
On
Thursday May 1, 2014, Elizabeth Donnelly, Assistant Head and Research Fellow,
Africa Program, Chatham House, - The Royal Institute
of International Affairs- London, Great
Britain; will deliver the opening address at the Colloquium. Her talk will
“focus on Boko Haram -what is known, what is not known, and the implications
and what can be done.” The event begins
at 5:30 p.m.
According to the Washington Post
“More than
1,500 people have been killed so far this year in attacks blamed on the
Nigerian radical group Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is
forbidden” in the local Hausa language. The terrorist network’s mission is to
force an Islamic state on Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation of some 170
million people divided almost equally between Muslims living mainly in the
north and Christians in the south.”
Following Ms. Donnelly’s address, she will join a panel
discussion Perspectives of Security:
Networks, trafficking and Terrorism in Africa with Ambassador Walter Carrington, Former US
Ambassador to Nigeria and Senegal; Ambassador John Campbell, Former US
Ambassador to Nigeria and a U.S.
State Department Representative.
The Moderator, Professor Donna A. Patterson, is a scholar of Africana
area studies at Wellesley College.
The evening will showcase performances by singers from the
Sri Chinmoy Centre; Ohafia war dancers from Abia State; a poetry, music, and
song collage by South Africa’s Sindiswa Seakhoa.
Thursday’s opening
event will usher
in high level intellectual discourse on contemporary issues facing the African
continent while examining the impact of the late Chinua Achebe’s writings on
modern African literature and world literature as a whole. The deliberations
will take place in List Art Center auditorium, 64 College St, Brown University,
Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The event is free and open to the public, but
space is limited and registration is required.
Speakers at this year’s colloquium
include Lynn Innes, professor emerita of English at the University of Kent and
author of an analysis of Achebe’s works; Simon Gikandi, professor of English at
Princeton University; Bernth Lindfors, professor emeritus of English at the
University of Texas–Austin and a leading scholar of African literature;
Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangaremgba; Giyatri Spivak, literary theorist and
professor at Columbia University; David Palumbo-Liu, professor of comparative
literature at Stanford University; Michael Thelwell, Jamaican novelist and
author of The Harder They Come; and Vijay Kumar, professor of English at
Osmania University in India.
Brown President Christina Paxson
will deliver a welcome address and Alhaji Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, executive
governor of the Kano State in Nigeria, will give Saturday’s closing keynote
address. Abena P.A. Busia, associate professor of English and co-director of
the Women Writing Africa Project at Rutgers University, will serve as Mistress
of Ceremony throughout the colloquium.
Sessions include a roundtable
reflection on Achebe’s life by his close friends and colleagues, the impact of
Achebe’s writing on the world; the conflict between poet and emperor as
reflected in Achebe’s writings, Achebe as a crusader of social justice and a
panel discussion on Achebe’s influence on hip hop music.
Over the three day event other
significant performances from Nigerian playwright Tess Onwueme; Afro roots
musical group Eme and Heteru; and power poetry by Ikeogu Oke with instrumentalist
Osuji Ngozi Michael will be featured.
This will be Brown’s fifth Achebe
Colloquium on Africa. The 2012 colloquium focused on governance, security
and solutions to peace in Africa. The 2011 colloquium explored several challenges facing
the region, including the Arab Spring and the crisis in Darfur. The 2010 colloquium focused attention on three African
nations — Rwanda, Congo, and Nigeria — and the crucial issues impacting the
countries, the continent, and the world. The inaugural 2009 colloquium addressed the problems and
prospects of the 2010 Nigerian elections.
This year’s colloquium schedule and
other details are available online at www.brown.edu/conference/achebe-colloquium/.
Editors:
Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and
international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio
interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476.
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