Please join us for a PHH Noted Scholar Lecture by Dr. Antje Ziethen, Associate Professor of French, Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies (FHIS), where she will speak about her PHH Faculty Fellowship project, “Return Migration across the Black Atlantic: The “Brazilians” in Francophone West Africa”. This lecture is also part of the FHIS Research Seminar.
Presenter: Dr. Antje Ziethen (FHIS)
Discussant: Dr. Marco Schaumloeffel (FHIS)
About the talk: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, 3000-8000 Africans and African descendants mainly from Brazil relocated to the Bight of Benin and developed extensive urban settlements in what is today Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. Two Francophone African authors have drawn attention to the Brazilian returnee communities and their immense legacy in Togo and Benin. In their novels Les Enfants du Brésil and Les Fantômes du Brésil, Kangni Alem and Florent Couao-Zotti retrieve an obscured chapter of transatlantic history and reimagine the establishment of an economic, political, and cultural elite whose influence can still be felt in cities such as Lomé and Ouidah. Both authors infuse their novels with historical and ethnological elements that are transformed by literature through what Alem calls “material imagination”. Dr. Antje Ziethen will read the novels through the lens of what Russell King and Anastasia Christou call “return mobilities”, a term that describes a wide variety of migratory counter-currents and thus enables me to discuss the novels’ complex returnee identities and notions of home. Dr. Ziethen particularly draws on Christin Hess’ concept of “reverse diaspora”, originally used in the European context.
Presenter:
Dr. Antje Ziethen specializes in African literatures and francophone literatures, with a particular focus on (urban) space, migration, and gender. She is the author of Géo/Graphies postcoloniales. La Poétique de l’espace dans le roman mauricien et sénégalais (WVT, 2013) and the co-editor of Beyond the Postmodern: Space and Place for the Early 21st Century (2015) and Afrika-Raum-Literatur/Africa-Space-Literature (2014). Dr. Ziethen has published special issues on science fiction in French, literary transnationalism, and spatial approaches to literature. Her most recent publications deal with the Black Mediterranean, speculative fiction, and geographic metafiction. Currently, she is working on her second manuscript which reads novels from across the African continent through the lens of transatlantic migration.
WHEN & WHERE
Wednesday, February 5, 3:00pm-4:30pm
Buchanan Tower Room 726
Please register for the event using the link below.