African Intellectual Mobilities: Diasporic Travel and Texts, Past and Present

This one-day colloquium hosted by the Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, UK, with the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Linnaeus University, Sweden, is dedicated to exploring historical and contemporary African and diasporic ‘travel writing’ and black travel and textual cultures.

The event features: 

• A reading by and interview with Noo Saro-Wiwa, acclaimed author of Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, who is working on her second book;
• A keynote by Dr Alasdair Pettinger, editor of pioneering anthology Always Elsewhere: Travels of the Black Atlantic, on the mid-19th-century travels and writings of African-American visitors to Britain and Ireland, Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, and how they might be read in relation to other black travel accounts and articulations.

Prospective contributors are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words for consideration, accompanied by a short biography and a note of key questions for engagement by 19 January 2015.

African Intellectual Mobilities cfp (MS Word , 17kb)

Speakers' biographies (MS Word , 16kb)

Email africanintellectualmobilities@gmail.com for registration and submission of abstracts.

Co-organisers: Professor David Attwell, Dr Nicklas Hållén, Janet Remmington.