Sunday, December 2, 2018

CONFERENCE PIN, POSTCOLONIAL INTELLECTUALS AND THEIR EUROPEAN PUBLICS

Utrecht, 5-6 February 2019

 

FULL PROGRAMME NOW AVAILABLE HERE

Who are the postcolonial intellectuals? Which of them are currently the most influential? What kind of intellectual activity do collectivities, networks and movements gathering around issues of race and citizenship perform? How do postcolonial academics, artists, writers, parties and movements respond to current timely issues in the European landscape such as migration, citizenship and the legacies of colonialism? How do they contribute to a new idea of “Europe” and relate to Western categories of modernity? Are their critical tools effective enough?

The PIN – Postcolonial Intellectuals and their European Publics network, not only focuses on postcolonial intellectuals as outspoken individuals, but also challenges the traditional definition of the “public intellectual” by emphasizing the role of artists, writers, activists and social movements in shaping postcolonial publics and knowledges.
Postcolonial Intellectuals and their European Publics network    (PIN) brings together an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars to investigate the role of postcolonial public intellectuals as crucial actors in renewing the function of the humanities and of democratic participation in Europe.

Organizer:
Prof. Sandra Ponzanesi (Utrecht University)

Confirmed Keynote speakers: 
Prof. Kaiama GloverAssociate  Professor of French and Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA.
On Blackness and Borders
Having received a B.A. in French History and Literature and Afro-American  Studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology  from Columbia University, Professor Glover joined the faculty in 2002. Her  teaching and research interests include francophone literature, particularly that   of Haiti and the French Antilles; colonialism and postcolonialism; and sub- Saharan francophone African cinema.. Her book, Haiti   Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon (Liverpool UP   2010), addresses the general issue of canon formation in the francophone   Caribbean and the particular fate of the Haitian Spiralist authors vis-à-vis this canon. Professor Glover has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, The New York Public Library, the PEN/Heim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and she is a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review. Continue reading here.

Prof. Awam Amkpa, Associate Professor, New York UniversityTisch School of The Arts, USA.

Political Activism and its Legibilities
Trained as a dramatist, documentary filmmaker and scholar of theatre and film, Awam Amkpa teaches Drama at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Africana Studies and Social and Cultural Analysis in NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences and is global visiting professor at NYU Abu Dhabi.  Former Senior Lecturer of Drama and Television at King Alfred’s University College, Winchester, England, and Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Mount Holyoke College. Author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires, London: Routledge, 2003 and forthcoming Archetypes, Stereotypes and Polytypes: Theatres of the Black Atlantic. Director of film documentaries such as Winds Against Our SoulsIts All About DowntownNational Images and Transnational Desires, and feature film Wazobia! Author of several articles in books and journals on Modernisms in TheatrePostcolonial theatreBlack Atlantic Issues, and Film studies. Awam Amkpa is also a curator of visual and performing arts. He recently curated, Resignifications for Manifesta 12, Palermo, Lines Motions and Rituals in New York, Significaciones in Havana, Cuba, ReSignifications in Florence, Italy and the international traveling exhibition Africa: See You, See Me. Amkpa is co-founder and co-curator of ‘Real Life Pan-African Documentary Film Festival’ in Accra, Ghana.
Practical information
Date: 5-6 February 2019
Time: 09.00 - 19.00
Location: Drift 21, room 0.05 Sweelinckzaal (entrance drift 27)

The conference is free of charge but registration is required. Please e-mail e.omerovic@uu.nl for registration.
THE FULL PROGRAMME CAN BE FOUND HERE

Abstracts and Bios can be accessed HERE

Photo courtesy of  © Omar Victor Diop, Sashakara, 2016, Le Studio des Vanités

Book presentation Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe, ed. by Sandra Ponzanesi and Adriano José Habed

5-6 February 2019, Utrecht University

Speakers
Among the confirmed speakers/contributors: 
Bolette B. Blaagaard, Rosemarie Buikema, Gianmaria Colpani, Adriano Jose Habed, Wigbertson Julian Isenia, Koen Leurs, Jamila M. H. Mascat, Ana Cristina Mendes, Sandra Ponzanesi, Mehdi Sajid, Neelam Srivastava, Jesse van Amelsvoort.
Special guest: Rosi Braidotti.

Postcolonial intellectuals have engaged with and deeply impacted upon European society since the figure of the intellectual emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yet a critical assessment and overview of their influential roles is long overdue, particularly in the light of contemporary debates in Europe and beyond.
With interventions by Engin Isin, Gayatri C. Spivak and Bruce Robbins. Read more here. Click here for more information about this book.

Practical information
Date: 5 February 2019
Time: 16.00 - 18.30
Location: Drift 21, room 0.05 Sweelinckzaal (entrance drift 27)

Please e-mail e.omerovic@uu.nl for registration.

Saturday, December 1, 2018

8th PCI FILM SERIES announcements for January and February 2019



PCI Film Series presents Call Me by Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino, 2017)    

Introduced by Sergio Rigoletto (University of Oregon, USA) 

A sensual and transcendent tale of first love, based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman 

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, the new film by Luca Guadagnino, is a sensual and transcendent tale of first love, based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman. It's the summer of 1983 in the north of Italy, and Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a precocious 17-year-old young man, spends his days in his family's 17th century villa transcribing and playing classical music, reading, and flirting with his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel). Elio enjoys a close relationship with his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), an eminent professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture, and his mother Annella (Amira Casar), a translator, who favor him with the fruits of high culture in a setting that overflows with natural delights. While Elio's sophistication and intellectual gifts suggest he is already a fully-fledged adult, there is much that yet remains innocent and unformed about him, particularly about matters of the heart. One day, Oliver (Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old American college graduate student working on his doctorate, arrives as the annual summer intern tasked with helping Elio's father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of the setting, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever. Source (IMDb)


Practical information

Call me by your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino, Italy, France, Brazil, Usa 2017, 2.21 min)
Date: 13 May 
Time: 17.00- 19.30
Location: Entrance at Muntstraat 2A, MCW-LAB (Grote zaal KNG20)
For more information: 
http://www.postcolonialstudies.nl/
Admission is free of charge. However, due to safety regulations, maximum capacity of the room is 80 people. No exceptions are made. First come, first seated


PCI Film Series presents I Am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)   


Introduced by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken (CUNY, USA)



I Am Not Your Negro review: race, rage and the American Dream.
Directed by Haitian-born Raoul Peck's I Am Not Your Negro, is a radical documentary about race in America today  based on James Baldwin's unfinished book Remember This House.  Peck  has created one of the most progressive filmographies in cinema history. He received privileged access to the Baldwin archives because the family knew of his outstanding works on the Conga leader, Patrice Lumumba, specifically the 1990 political thriller Lumumba: Death of a Prophet and the 2000 award winning drama on the same subject, Lumumba. They trusted in his ability to accurately represent Baldwin's life and writings, and so he took 10 years to bring this masterpiece to the screen, after being rejected by every American studio he approached. And public agencies said "this is public money so you have to present both sides!" Thus, his ability to produce this film through his own successful company and a supportive French TV station ARTE, allowed him to make a film exactly like he wanted, with no censorship, and no one telling him to rush the film or mellow the message. Peck "didn't want to use the traditional civil rights archives." He chose to avoid the talking heads format and picked Samuel L. Jackson to embody the spirit of Baldwin in the potent narration. The film's powerful structure utilizing rare videos and photos and personal writings of Baldwin, and at the same time aligning them with contemporary issues of police brutality and race relations, creates a mesmerizing awareness of the continuity in the struggle for civil rights.
Practical information
I Am Not Your Negro (2017, dir. Raoul Peck, France, United States, Switzerland, Belgium)
Date: 12 February
Time: 17.15 - 20.00
Location: Entrance at Muntstraat 2A, MCW-LAB (Grote zaal KNG20)
Admission is free of charge. However, due to safety regulations, maximum capacity of the room is 80 people. No exceptions are made. First come, first seated.

PCI Film Series presents Happy End (dir. Michael Haneke, 2017)  

Introduced by Milica Trakilovic (Gender Studies, UU) 


A drama about a family set in Calais with the European refugee crisis as the backdrop.
Happy End dissects an unhappy, self-deceiving family. And yet Jean-Louis Trintignant, as a patriarch this time slipping into dementia himself, has a beautifully intimate conversation with his 12-year-old granddaughter Eve (Fantine Harduin). Even if, this still being Haneke, she’s probably a murderer, and their heart to heart is about poison and suicide. “He’s a more humanistic director than he seems,” Huppert has noted. “There is of course no sentimentality, but there is a belief in mankind.”
“It’s a North-South conflict,” Haneke’s says. “The rich countries against the poor. That’s been confirmed categorically, since Code Unknown. Refugees aren’t a simple problem, and there are no simple solutions, but a solution has to be found. The problem is that, for a lot of people at the moment, the solution is a shift to the right. I’m especially sceptical of comparisons with the 1930s. But this current atmosphere, with everyone dancing on the edge of the volcano, has a parallel there. Because in my youth, immediately after the war, everybody thought that things would get better – because everything could only get better, after that. But now everybody thinks that things can only get worse, and that is a parallel to the situation before World War Two.” (The Guardian)
Practical information
Happy End (2017, dir. Michael Haneke, France, Germany, Austria)
Date: 11 March
Time: 17.15- 20.00
Location: Entrance at Muntstraat 2A, MCW-LAB (Grote zaal KNG20)
Admission is free of charge. However, due to safety regulations, maximum capacity of the room is 80 people. No exceptions are made. First come, first seated