African & African American Studies
Afro/Black Paris – Future/Past
Dartmouth College
April 27-28, 2018
A symposium to launch the African and African American Studies Program’s Afro/Black Paris Foreign Study Program
Convened by Trica Keaton, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies
Friday, April 27, 2018
Black Family Visual Arts Center, Loew Auditorium, Dartmouth College
4:30 pm – Welcome & Opening Film Screenings
Sydney C. Stowe, Director of Film, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College
5 pm – Mariannes Noires: Mosaïques Afropèennes (2016) by Mame-Fatou Niang
Brief Synopsis: Seven Afro-French women investigate the pieces of their mosaic identities and unravel what it means to be French, covering topics from family to entrepreneurship to definitions of beauty.
Subtitled: 1hr 23min.
Q & A: Ayo Coly, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College
7 pm – Reception (Black Family Visual Arts Center, Nearburg Gallery)
The reception will feature a short performance by Soyeya, a Dartmouth student dance group exploring both modern and traditional forms of dance from across the African continent.
8 pm – An Opera of the World (2017) by Manthia Diawara
Brief Synopsis: Manthia Diawara’s moving, intersecting film illustrates how opera may be ideally suited to telling stories related to the refugee crisis. It features excerpts from Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, which chronicles a young mother’s desperate attempts to secure a better future. The fascinating film ponders the lived reality of cultural encounters, and it explores the success and limits of fusing African and European perspectives by interlacing performances from the Bintou Were opera, coupled with past and present archival footage of migrations, classic European arias, and interviews with European and African intellectuals, artists and social activists – including Alexander Kluge, Fatou Diome, Nicole Lapierre and Richard Sennett.
Subtitled: 1hr 10min.
Q & A: Jesse Shipley, Chair and Professor of African and African American Studies, Dartmouth College
Jeffrey Ruoff, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Dartmouth College
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Haldeman Center 041
9 am – Symposium Opening
Welcome: Barbara Will, Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, A. and R. Newbury Professor of English, Dartmouth College
Remarks: Trica Keaton, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Dartmouth College
Remarks: Jesse Shipley, Chair and Professor of African and African American Studies, Dartmouth College
Closing: David LaGuardia, Chair and Professor of French and Italian, Professor of Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College
10 am: Panel I – Framing Afro/Black Paris
Past-Future & Future-Past
Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the African and African-American Studies Research Center, University of California, San Diego
Presentation: “Representations of Black Paris: Revisiting the Archive & Looking Toward the Future”
Tyler Stovall, Distinguished Professor of History and Dean of the Humanities, University of California, Santa Cruz
Presentation: “Is Black Paris History? Reflections on France’s Black Past”
Dominic Thomas, Chair and Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Presentation: “(Post)-Migration, Race and Nativism”
Manthia Diawara, University Professor and Filmmaker, Director of the Institute of African American Affairs, New York University
Presentation: “Édouard Glissant and the Concept of All Worlds: Immigration and the New Humanities”
Respondent: Donald Pease, Professor of English; Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities; Chair of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, Dartmouth College
12:30 pm: Lunch
Class of 1930 Room, Rockefeller Center
2 pm: Panel II – France, Slavery, and Colonialism
Christopher L. Miller, Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of African American Studies and French, Yale University
Presentation: “Can We Talk about Camara Laye? (Did Camara Lie?)”
Tabetha Leigh Ewing, Associate Professor of History and Chair, Social Studies Division, Bard College; Co-chair, “Beyond France” University Seminar, Columbia University; Fellow, New York Institute for the Humanities
Presentation: “Nègre de Nation: Atlantic Suicide and Slavery in 18th-Century Paris”
Keith L. Walker, Professor of French and African and African American Studies, Dartmouth College
Presentation: “The Violin’s Vibrato, the Sword’s Unsheathing, Concepts Quivering 1745–1799”
Nathalie Batraville, Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows; Research Associate and Lecturer, Department of French and Italian, Dartmouth College
Presentation: “Black Queer Erotics and the End of the World in Aimé Césaire’s Solar Throat Slashed”
Respondent: Robert Baum, Associate Professor of Religion and African and African American Studies, Dartmouth College
4:15 pm: Panel III – Afro/Black Paris
Imaging Activism and the Visual Landscape
Rokhaya Diallo, Journalist, Writer, Director, France
Presentation: “Reshaping the Image of France through Afro Beauty”
Louis-Georges Tin, Associate Professor of Literature, University of Orléans; President of the Representative Council of France’s Black Associations (CRAN), France
Presentation: “Getting Colonial Reparations in the French Context”
Alexis Peskine, Visual Artist, France
Presentation: “Power Figures”
Mame-Fatou Niang, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Filmmaker, Carnegie Mellon University
Presentation: “Blackness in French: Translating the Black Experience in the Hexagon”
Respondent: Chelsey Kivland, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Dartmouth College
Closing: David LaGuardia, Chair and Professor of French and Italian, Professor of Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College
6:45 pm: Reception for Conference Attendees
Top of the Hop, Hopkins Center
8 pm: Dinner for Conference Participants
Faculty Lounge, Hopkins Center
Sponsored by African and African American Studies, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities, Office of the Provost, John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Frank J. Guarini Associate Dean for International Studies and Interdisciplinary Programs, Department of German Studies, Department of History, Department of French and Italian, Department of English and Creative Writing, Department of Studio Art, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, Jewish Studies Program, Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, Department of Theater, Department of Anthropology, and Department of Spanish and Portuguese.