The Archives of African Literature Colloquium

The Black Archival Imagination Lab invites you to "The Archives of African Literature Colloquium" symposium. The symposium will feature Keynote Speaker Jean-Marie Jackson and several presenting and responding scholars. Join us on Friday, November 14th, 2025, 9 am - 3:15 pm in 314 Allen Building on Duke University's West Campus. Introduction Neil ten Kortenaar - Volume editor MORNING SESSION "Nairobi as an Archive of Literary Imagination" James Ogude (University of Pretoria) - Editor Christopher Ouma (Duke University) - Respondent "Algiers as a 'Realm' of Memory in Contemporary Algerian Postcolonial Literature of French Expression" Valerie Orlando (University of Maryland) Courtney Klashman (Duke University, PhD Candidate) - Respondent "Imagining Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Works of African" Cheryl Sterling (Penn State) Ethan Barrett (Duke University, PhD Candidate) - Respondent AFTERNOON SESSION KEYNOTE "On Gold Coast Jurisdictional Modernity: African Literature's Archive of Distinction" Jeanne-Marie Jackson (Johns Hopkins University) - Keynote Tsitsi Jaji (Duke University) - Respondent "The Archival Impulse in African Fictions of Civil Strife" Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba (University of Winnipeg) Sam Dennis Otieno (Penn State University) - Respondent "The Colonial Archive" Neil ten Kortenaar (University of Toronto) - Volume Editor Alex Fyfe (University of Georgia) - Respondent KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Jean-Marie Jackson is a Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, a scholar and critic of African and world literature with interests in theory of the novel, literature and philosophy, sub-Saharan African literature, Russian realism, and global regionalisms. Jackson is the author of South African Literature's Russian Soul, The African Novel of Ideas, and The Letter of the Law in J.E. Casely Hayford's West Africa. "The Archives of African Literature Colloquium" is sponsored by the Black Archival Imagination Lab at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Africa Initiative, Duke Concilium of Southern Africa, Duke English, and the Department of African & African American Studies at Duke University. You can register to attend remotely at https://duke.is/b/fbga.