Human Cargoes: The Migrant Crisis in African Literature and Cinem

Human Cargoes: The Migrant Crisis in African Literature and Cinem

Session type: Panel

Organized by: Emilie Diouf

Send abstracts or inquiries to: diouf@brandeis.edu

Boats loaded with youth fleeing harsh socio-economic and political conditions have smuggled through the most treacherous point of the Mediterranean and have caused thousands of young men and women to die while others remain captive in Libya where they are dragged through several layers of exploitation and suffering. The main questions that this panel seeks to explore, then, are how do African writers and filmmakers represent the socio-economic, political, and psychological realities of Africa’s migrant crisis. How do African Literature and Cinema offer ways of conceptualizing, visualizing and critiquing the positioning of African migrants and refugees in the judicial and media discourse surrounding the global migrant crisis?
This panel welcomes proposals on (but is not limited to) the representation of:
• the figure of the African migrant in African literature and cinema;
• postcolonial violence and forced displacements;
• the economy of narrative in the mediation of African refugee experiences;
• the trauma of displacement.

All interested presenters should send their abstract to diouf@brandeis.edu by Monday February 12th.