The History of Sub-Saharan African Literatures on Film

Cinematic adaptations of sub-Saharan African literatures draw from a wide range of genres from West African folktales to Zulu legends, from Hausa popular literature to graphic novels, war narratives or Afro Bubblegum art. Departing from the notion that, like literature and cinema, cinematic adaptations are influenced by historical moments and political, social and economic transitions, The History of Sub-Saharan African Literatures on Film seeks chapter proposals that examine adaptations of African literatures–in their multilingual and multicultural contexts–in order to provide a comprehensive volume that spans linguistic regions and will serve as a resource to specialists and non-specialists alike. The volume aims to be a sort of adaptation archive and thus strongly urges chapter proposals that focus on Afrophone and Europhone countries throughout the sub-Saharan region. Moreover, if we consider adaptation as “réécriture” (re-writing) (Tcheuyap 2005), our study of multiple rewritings across time and space seeks to contribute to a rewriting or a rethinking of history, a reformulation of theories and even a rethinking or new direction for adaptation studies.

In individual chapters, the historical, political, social and/or economic contexts should frame discussions about, for instance, aesthetic choices in adaptation, what adaptation might bring to the discussion, or the choice itself of what to adapt to the screen and which screen, who chooses to adapt and why. Authors might focus on the aspect of storytelling through montage, framing, setting or on filmmaking as language, other language choices in films, music in adaptations, readership and viewership, and whether or how adaptation approaches have changed in response to or as a result of a particular historical moment or event. Contributors may choose to take up additional questions, such as: How have authorial approaches, storytelling techniques and media changed throughout the region’s cinematic history? How do storytellers deploy narrative techniques, approach narrative units and structures, and how do narrative styles merge or differ with regard to the choice of medium? What do filmmakers’ narrative choices bring to adaptation and what do those choices tell us about adaptation? Further, if African filmmaking has relied on the discourses and theoretical positioning in African literatures, how has the medium of film articulated those discourses and theories and expanded upon them? Altered them? How much has adaptation played a role in this process? Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged, including from the fields of postcolonial theory, cultural studies, literary theory, translation theory, queer theory.

Chapters should situate adaptation within a particular historical, political, social or economic moment or time period, such as:

– First generation African filmmaking and adaptation, the Algiers Charter (1969) and political and aesthetic aims of African cinema, including the adaptation of myths, folktales, legends, plays, short stories and novels

– Adaptation, revolutions and revolutionary aesthetics and techniques; national identity and politics

– Popular media – popular theatre, market literature, video production; adaptation and Nollywood, Kannywood, Ghallywood, and in video production in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Cameroon, Tanzania

– Adaptations of war narratives, child soldier narratives

-Adaptations and African screen media in the 21st century, modes of production, distribution, or of viewing

– Film languages, local and international actors, professional and non-professional actors, co-productions, global collaborations

Please submit a 250-300-word abstract with your name, title and affiliation to the editor, Dr. Sara Hanaburgh hanaburs@stjohns.edu by September 1, 2019. Include “Call for Book Chapters” in email subject. Accepted abstracts will be notified by September 20. Submission of full chapters (5,000-8,000 words) by February 20, 2020.

This book is under contract with Bloomsbury as part of the growing series, The History of World Literatures on Film, eds. Greg Semenza and Robert Hasenfratz.

Sara Hanaburgh, Ph. D

Assistant Professor of French

Department of Languages and Literatures

Faculty Mentor, International House

St. John’s University (Queens, NY)

hanaburs@stjohns.edu

Panel Co-Directors: Leonardo Nole’ and Joseph Boisvere

Theorizing Transmediality in its Transnational Contexts

The study of literature has always relied upon the traversal of borders of various kinds, both inter and intra nationally. This panel will engage with issues of literary study across geographical and cultural borders as well as the boundaries between literary and audio-visual media in the contemporary digital age. As the field of screen studies has been informed by theoretical frameworks originating in the field of literary studies, we ask how the interpretation of literary texts is informed by disciplines that are only now, in the digital age, being born. As digital technologies intensify movement of media across traditional notions of borders between various communities, how can we model the traversal of literary analysis across not only such borders but the bounds of medium? In the digital age of increasing access to literary and audio/visual materials, how is transmediality related to transnational and transcultural transposition? We welcome papers that discuss the engagement with texts both on the page and on the screen from a theoretical or hermeneutical perspective as well as papers that apply this logic to specific case studies.

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019.

250-word abstracts must be submitted online through the NeMLA website at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18091 [cfplist.com], before September 30, 2019. Individual presentations should not be longer than 7-8 minutes, in order to have enough time for the discussion.

The Graduate Center’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) seeks contributors to its blog, Visible Pedagogy for academic year 2019-2020. Contributing writers will craft a series of posts over the course of the Fall semester on a topic they define, and Guest Editors will curate a series on a topic of their choice with writers they recruit.

The choice of topic is open, but the proposed series of posts should be linked by a unifying theme or rationale. For instance, new instructors might reflect on the challenges of teaching for the first time, while more experienced ones might think more deeply about a particular aspect of pedagogy, including methods, approaches, or technologies. Writers may also consider a particular question or challenge within higher education to explore in relation to their classroom practices. Applicants are encouraged to look at the past series of topics covered by our contributing writers, as well as this recent post by the editor.

Authors must be interested writing for a general audience in higher education and be willing to engage with the TLC Staff in the editorial process. Basic familiarity with Google docs and WordPress is preferred. Selected writers and editors will be asked to meet with TLC Director, Luke Waltzer, and Visible Pedagogy Editor, Kaitlin Mondello, at the start of the fall.

Interested applicants should email the materials below to Visible Pedagogy Editor Kaitlin Mondello at tlc@gc.cuny.edu by Monday, June 17. Posting will begin in September.

Application procedures for the two programs are below.

1. Contributing Writers

Selected writers will commit to writing, revising, and publishing 3 blog posts of approximately 500-750 words for the Fall 2019 semester.

Please email a merged pdf or Word doc. with the following materials:

• a 250-500 word description of your proposed series of posts, its rationale, and your reasons for wanting to write it
• a sample of your non-or-para academic writing (preferably, a previous blog post or other public-facing writing on a digital platform), not to exceed 1500 words
• CV

2. Guest Editors Series

To apply as a guest editor, you should follow the same guidelines above for contributing writers, including proposing a series of related posts around a specific topic, BUT rather than author all the posts yourself, you will recruit three other writers to write one post each on your topic. These writers must meet the same eligibility requirements as other contributing writers. You will be responsible for writing your own introductory post to the series and to work with the other three writers on their posts for continuity and quality. Groups of more than four will be considered if there is a desire to co-edit or co-author.

The VP editor and TLC staff will work closely with the Guest Editors and their contributing writers. Editors and writers may be from the same department, but interdisciplinary perspectives are welcomed. Guest editors should secure commitments and topics from their contributing writers PRIOR to submitting the application to the TLC. Please include the names, disciplines, and topics for each contributing writer in your application for a Guest Editor series.

This program is modeled on proposing a conference panel or guest editing a special edition of a journal, and is designed to give graduate students additional experience and practice with these forms, as well as to examine a single topic from multiple perspectives.

Criteria for Selection

All applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

• The clarity, creativity, and feasibility of the proposed series
• The style and quality of the writing
• The originality of the viewpoint(s) being represented
• The role of the proposed series in the balance of perspectives and disciplines on the blog

To qualify, all applicants must be enrolled at the Graduate Center during the Fall 2019 semester. This opportunity is open to both Doctoral and Masters students.

Compensation

Contributing writers and guest editors will be paid an honoraria to be determined before the start of the fall semester. All funds will be disbursed as a lump sum as financial aid.

About VP

Visible Pedagogy is a blog dedicated to advancing and expanding conversations about teaching and learning at CUNY, edited by the staff of the Teaching & Learning Center at The Graduate Center, and collaboratively authored by CUNY faculty, staff, and students.

We are interested in both the theory and practice of teaching and learning. Our Reflective Practice series brings these ideas together as CUNY instructors reflect critically on ideas, issues, or challenges they’ve encountered in their teaching careers and their classrooms.

University of Pittsburgh
Film and Media Studies Graduate Conference CFP
Limits of Cinema / Cinema Limited?
September 27-28, 2019
Keynote: Jeffrey Sconce (Northwestern University)

The cinematic medium has been historically shaped through several negotiations with its own limits and those imposed on it. Regulatory scrutiny of the moving image began as early as the peepshows of the Kinetoscope parlors. Formal censorship was soon implemented in many countries as a legal infrastructure serving in the moral guidance of youth and other demographics deemed vulnerable to irresponsible depictions of crimes and sex, as well as political propaganda. Continue reading Due May 30 | CfP – Limits of Cinema / Cinema Limited? →

Do you see a conference in your future? If so, please join us for the Writing Services CFP – Abstract Writing Workshop.

About the Workshop

On Tuesday, February 26, 2019, from 6:00 – 8:00 pm, in room 3317, we’ll meet for a brief a presentation detailing some of the “best practices” of CFP answering and abstract composition. After the presentation, students will workshop their CFPs in peer editing groups. We ask that students bring a paper copy of the CFP and the abstract they’d like to workshop.

Please RSVP

If you’re planning on coming to our workshop, please RSVP using our event registration form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSch6I5NKGfXG_sjRdevhJ65q6nAEFULq2JeBGDip7ma9JIXGQ/viewform.

See flyer here CFP – Abstract Writing Workshop

Call For Papers

CUNY Graduate Center English Student Association Conference:
BLACK LIVES

SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FEBRUARY 28, 2019 

Conference date: Friday, April 12, 2019 

CUNY Graduate Center
New York, NY 

KEYNOTES BY:
Michelle Wright, Emory University
Rafael Walker, Baruch College

“Black Lives” has emerged in recent years as a conceptual touchstone following the wake of Black Lives Matter, a galvanizing social movement of public protest against the persistence of institutionalized forms of anti-black violence that besiege Black individuals and communities on a daily basis, both within the United States and across a range of geopolitical contexts. The phrase implicitly challenges nationalist and global concepts of humanity that do not include blackness as a viable sign of life and citizenship. As critics such as Paul Gilroy, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Robert Reid-Pharr and  Henry Louis Gates Jr. have noted, “universal humanism” has been historically built upon a constitutive rejection of black being. To push back against such entrenched conceptual repudiations of black particularity, we take a cue from Jamaican philosopher and novelist Sylvia Wynter, who argues that black particularity paradoxically retains a utopian impulse for recognizing “our collective agency and authorship of our genres of being human” (2006). We intend for the conference to respond to the urgent need to think about the impact and meaning of “Black Lives” both as a touchstone for contemporary activism as well as a scholarly heuristic for research across a range of fields and disciplines. By doing so, we hope to make resonant the potentiality of blackness to signify as a radical node of meaning and being across a range of identitarian and relational articulations. Continue reading Deadline Feb 28 | CfP – “Black Lives,” CUNY ESA Conference →

The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy
General Issue

Issue Editors:
Shelly Eversley, Baruch College, CUNY
Krystyna Michael, The Graduate Center, CUNY

The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) seeks scholarly work that explores the intersection of technology with teaching, learning, and research. We are interested in contributions that take advantage of the affordances of digital platforms in creative ways. We invite both textual and multimedia submissions employing interdisciplinary and creative approaches in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Besides scholarly papers, the submissions can consist of audio or visual presentations and interviews, dialogues, or conversations; creative/artistic works; manifestos; or other scholarly materials, including work that addresses the labor and care considerations of academic technology projects. Continue reading Deadline extended to June 1 | Call for Submissions – Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy →

Screening Performance, Performing Screens: New Projections in Theatre and Media

May 13-14, 2019

The Graduate Center, CUNY

In the streets, in our homes, in our hands; in public and private; in work, leisure, and social relations; ubiquitous and invisible, tangible or porous, screens are constructing a new reality. Artistic practices and critical theories are rapidly evolving to address this change of paradigm in communication, perception, and being. This conference aims to gather scholars and artists from multiple disciplines around the trope of the screen with its multiple resonances, to explore as-yet-unseen avenues of understanding across media. Continue reading Deadline Jan 21 | CfP – Screening Performance, Performing Screens: New Projections in Theatre and Media” →

CFP: University of Michigan 2019 Graduate Student Conference in U.S. History
Making History Public(s): Presenting the Collective
Friday May 10 and Saturday May 11, 2019
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

The United States is comprised of publics. Filtered through media, politics, and social, cultural and economic life, American publics materialize through national, international, state, and local avenues. At what point do they become visible? How do American bodies become public? What are the consequences of these processes?

“Making History Public(s)” will interrogate the creation of publics in the United States, broadly defined. Papers might investigate the making of publics in any number of ways: as citizenry or voting block; as audience or consumer; as the product of, or precursor to political mobilization or disruption; as transnational formation; as agent or passive actor. American publics might be defined spatially or ideologically, shaped through communication, proximity, or knowledge. They might be determined institutionally, informally, or discursively.

At the same time, this conference will investigate the ways in which publics become both producers of, and audiences for historical knowledge. We seek papers that position the historical actor and themselves as part of the active production of history, considering the role of presentation, display, exhibition, and preservation. What is the role of art, visual culture, sound, and material in making history accessible to academic and public audiences, and students? This might also include scholars working in pedagogy, digital humanities, museum studies, mapping, and other fields.

Our keynote speaker is Professor Ellen Noonan, Director of the Archives and Public History Program at New York University. She is the author of The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess: Race, Culture, and America’s Most Famous Opera (University of North Carolina, 2012), and her various digital history projects include: The American Social History Project, Mission US, and The Lost Museum.

Scholars working in all periods of American history, and in various modes of interdisciplinarity are welcome! Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a CV to the conference planning committee at umusgradconference@gmail.com. Proposals are due by Sunday, January 28, 2019.