UPDATE: Gender, Nationalism, and Postcoloniality in Africa (9/25/03; NEMLA, 3/3/04-3/7/04)

Deadline extended to 9/25/03

Gender, Nationalism, and Postcoloniality in Africa

Northeastern Modern Language Association

March 3-7, 2004

Pittsburg, PA

The post-independence period in many African nations has unleashed a
number of protesting voices and important testimonies that documented the
aporitical stance of the African subjectivity as it still oscillates
between dreams of restoring/preserving a pristine African identity and
adopting Western modernity. The discourse of nationalism and national
identity is perhaps more than ever before pitted against a growing
rhetoric of globalism and multiculturalism. The unprecedented trafficking
of culture and human labor through porous borders between the west and
Africa has led to interrogating the foundational concepts of African
identity. Received narratives of the nation and of macro histories are
constantly put into question by the emerging voices of African women
writers. These women's narratives do resist and challenge totalizing
concepts of identity and nationalism. Their stories are constant reminders
that there is always another side to official indigenous nationalistic
discourse. Their micro histories, more often than not, chronicle women's
historical agency and contribution to the independence movements. Yet,
they also show how the plight of the African woman is constantly being
submerged into a traditionalist and nationalistic rhetoric that, under the
garb of authenticity, deny them equal opportunity and equal rights. Thus
the rampant talk about the postcolonial state and society has also
generated significant debates about the position of woman in African
society. This panel invites papers that specifically interrogate the
foundational narratives of nationalism and postcoloniality in African
fiction from a feminist point of view. Some of the questions that the
panel will engage are: to what extent has the postcolonial state in Africa
afforded equal citizenship to women? What has and still is the role of
women in the making of the narrative of the nation? How can patriarchal
and totalizing concepts of women's identity be challenged?

Please send one-two-page abstracts by September 25 to

Salah Moukhlis

920 Sycamore Ave. #2

Vista, CA 92081

Or e-mail to: smoukhli_at_csusm.edu <smoukhli_at_csusm.edu> (no attachments please)

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Received on Sun Sep 07 2003 - 22:11:27 EDT