Shakespearean Pasts, African Futurities: Entanglements of Memory, Temporalities and Knowledge(s)

Conveners

• Serena Talento, Literatures in African Languages, University of Bayreuth, serena.talento@uni-bayreuth.de
• Ifeoluwa Aboluwade, English Studies and Anglophone Literatures, University of Bayreuth, ifeoluwa.aboluwade@uni-bayreuth.de
• Dr. Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong, African Literatures and Cultures, Humboldt University Berlin, chiangop@cms.hu-berlin.de
• Dr. Oliver Nyambi, English Studies and Anglophone Literatures, University of Bayreuth, nyambiO@ufs.ac.za
  

Contact Person

• Ifeoluwa Aboluwade, English and Anglophone Literatures, University of Bayreuth, ifeoluwa.aboluwade@uni-bayreuth.de
  

Summary

Fictional works proffer myriad ways of engaging with and (re)imagining futures through temporal emplotment(s) and the elucidation of the entanglements of literary life-worlds with the social realities that informs it and which it in turn refracts. Fictional life-worlds are thus inherently implicated in the glocal un/making of (knowledges about) futures. Theoretically informed by postcolonial theory, intersectionality theory, memory studies as well as theories of adaptation and translation, the working group will scrutinize fictional and cinematic imaginations and (re)conceptualizations of futurities in contemporary African and African-Diasporic adaptations and versions of Shakespearean plays as well as (comparatively) in the Shakespearean plays themselves. The working group will also engage with the re-interpretation of Shakespearean topoi, especially within African nationalist agendas, the (re)framing of prior texts vis-à-vis situated audiences as well as the synergies between various forms of literary and cinematic mediations. Its comparative approach as well as the spotlight on the complex and multiple factors, contexts, processes, media and agencies that characterize the fictional (un)making of futurities in African and African-Diasporic narratives highlight the multiplicity, relationality and reflexivity emphases of the Cluster.

Activities

Workshop - “Shakespeare and Africa: Literary Entanglements across Space and Time”

University of Bayreuth, 19-20.02.2020
Room: S121 Building: GWI

Please find the workshop schedule here.