BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:The Diasporic Shock of Elsewhere in African and African American Literature
DESCRIPTION:Join us for a virtual conversation with Margo Natalie Crawford, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of English at University of Pennsylvania and Professor-at-Large at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University.
 
Part of the Area Studies to Global Studies Seminar Series, her lecture examines 20th- and 21st-century African American literature, visual culture, and global Black studies, highlighting how literature and art illuminate Black radical imaginations.
 
The seminar will be co-moderated by doctoral students in Global Studies: Kate Qazi, Alya Rashid Burhaima, and Ahmed Abdelrahman Almaazmi.
Abstract
Using Édouard Glissant’s theory of the “shock of elsewhere,” this lecture will examine the diasporic impulse that continues to blur the boundaries between African and African American literature. Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, the letters between Bessie Head and Langston Hughes, Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy and The Dilemma of a Ghost, and the Black Arts Movement poetry of Keorapetse Kgositsile will be examined through a focus on the art of the “shock of elsewhere.” The final movement in this lecture will be a turn to book covers and other visual art that shed light on this black diasporic shock of elsewhere.
About the Seminar Series
From Area Studies to Global Studies is a seminar series that aims to examine and move beyond conventional frameworks in area studies by engaging critical debates across Africa, Asia, and their diasporas. Embedded within the Ph.D. in Global Studies curriculum, the series brings invited scholars into conversation with graduate students, faculty, and the wider public.
 
The series is organized by Salah M. Hassan, Professor of African Art History and Visual Studies, and Binyam Sisay Mendisu, Professor of African Languages and Linguistics.
LOCATION:Virtual
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260416
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260416
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR