5TH GLOBAL AFRICAS: AFROTOPIAS CONFERENCE - EVENT PROGRAM

5th Global Africas: Afrotopias

Winthrop-King Institute For Contemporary French & Francophone Studies

April 10-11, 2025 

Location: Student Services BuilDING

 

Organizer: Michelle Bumatay

Thursday, 10 April

9-9:30 am Registration & breakfast (SSB 218)

9:40 am Opening Remarks (SSB 214)

9:45-11:15 am (PANEL 1) West African Logotopias: Literature, Testimony, and History as Social Re-Imaginaries (SSB 214)

Chair: Joseph Hellweg

  • Joachim Adams (FSU), “Challenging the Dystopia: Queerness and African Identity in De purs hommes”
  • Sawel Awuni (The University of Mississippi), “Le Sens utopique dans les discours politiques en Afrique de l’Ouest avant et pendant les campagnes électorales”
  • Rosa de Jorio (FSU), “Contested Memories: Family, State, and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Mali”
  • Joseph Hellweg (FSU), “Dozo Song, Dozo Oath: Relational Causality as a Principle of Political Emancipation in Ancient Mali and Contemporary Côte d’Ivoire”

11:15-11:30 am Break

11:30 am – 1 pm (PANEL 2) Mining & Creating Francophone Afrotopias (SSB 214)

Chair: Michelle Bumatay

  • Fabiola Obame (Université Omar Bongo), “Regard sur les pratiques écoculturelles dans le Bassin du Congo : de la décolonisation à l’émergence des savoirs précoloniaux”
  • Joachim Adams (FSU), “Afrotopian Futures: Feminist and Queer Reimaginations in Werewere Liking’s Elle sera de jaspe et de corail”
  • Kristen Stern (University of Massachusetts Lowell), “Looking for and making other worlds: 1949 Books and Après la première page”
  • Michelle Bumatay (FSU), “Reine Dibussi and Afiri Studio: Creating Inclusive Afrotopias”

1-2 pm LUNCH

2-3:15 pm (PANEL 3) Nigeriatopias: Christian, Muslim, and Diasporic Projects for Social Well-Being, in and beyond Yorubaland (SSB 214)

Chair: Ridwan Balogun

  • Florence Egbeyale (FSU), “Afrotopia at the Intersection of Culture and Faith: Abiyamo’s Role in a Church-Led Maternity Center in Southwest Nigeria”
  • Zainab Winjobi-Arikewuyo (FSU), “Islamoitopia in the Diaspora: Asalatu and the Cultural Flourishing of Yoruba Muslim Women in the U.S.”
  • Ridwan Balogun (FSU), “Islamotopia in Practice: Yoruba Salafi Adaptations in Nigeria’s Public Health Sphere”

3:15 - 3:30 pm Break

3:30-5 pm (PANEL 4) Performance and Afrotopias (SSB 214)

Chair: Mehdi Chalmers

  • Frank Gunderson (FSU), “Sounding the Table Ronde – Joseph Kabasele and the Sonic Promise of Independence in African Jazz”
  • Mehdi Chalmers (FSU), “A Greater Guinea: Afro-Caribbean Reimaginings of Homeland in Haitian Vodou, Rasin Music, and Poetry”
  • Victoria Barbara Lopes dos Santos (Princeton University), “Buruburu: A Reading of the Modern-Colonial Sovereignty Model Based on the Orisha Omolu”
  • Melani Shi (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), “Dancing Africa-Asia: The Reverse Globalization of Kizomba”

5-6 pm Opening Reception

Friday, 11 April

9-9:40 am Registration & breakfast (SSB 201)

9:45-11 am (PANEL 5) Inventing Queer Côte d’Ivoire: Trans & Gay Activism as Afrotopian Practice in an Anti-Queer Dystopia (SSB 214)

Chair: Joseph Hellweg

  • Monroe Dosso, “An Overseas Afrotopia: Migration as Path to Safety in a Diasporic Queer Community”
  • Moustapha Hassan, “Visions of Safety: A Community-Based Strategy to Ensure Ivorian Queer Security in Times of Crisis”
  • Katia Madou Franck Lokpo, “Activist Networks as Proximal Afrotopia: NGOs as Resources in the Struggle for Trans Dignity in Côte d’Ivoire”

11:00 - 11:15 am Break

11:15 am – 12:45 pm (PANEL 6) Afrotopias in Francophone Literature & Film (SSB 214)

Chair: Carine Schermann

  • Stève Puig (St. John’s University), “L’« Afrotopie » chez Nadia Yala Kisukidi: désespoir et marronnage dans La dissociation”
  • Brigitte Tsobgny (Emory University), “Femme du ciel et des tempêtes de Wilfried N’Sondé : fédération des savoirs et amitié entre les peuples, alliée de la cause environnementale”
  • Thomas Muzart (Pomona College), “Politique du ‘faire corps avec la terre’ dans Rouge Impératrice de Léonora Miano”
  • Brigid Enchill (University of Kansas), “Afrotopia, Speculative Fiction and the Future of a Reimagined Africa in Sylvestre Amoussou’s L’Orage africain”

12:45-2 pm LUNCH

2-3:30 pm (PANEL 7) Afrotopias in the Diaspora (SSB 214)

Chair: Vincent Joos

  • Youri Buyle (University of Pennsylvania), “Reverse Migration and Tales of (Un)successful Entrepreneurship: Black French People’s Contributions to Africa’s Future”
  • Sonjah Stanley Niaah (Institute of Caribbean Studies, The University of the West Indies), Jalani Niaah (Institute of Caribbean Studies, The University of the West Indies), and Nicole Plummer (Institute of Caribbean Studies, The University of the West Indies), “Black Wellness Afrotopias”
  • Carine Schermann (FSU), “Scales, Horns, and Furs: The Politics of Caribbean Metamorphoses”
  • Faroukou Mintoiba (Bizim Afrika – African Diaspora Platform in Türkiye), “African Diaspora as Transnational Solidities Spaces Toward a Global Afrotopia”

3:30-4 pm Coffee break (SSB 201)

4-5:30 pm Keynote – Felwine Sarr (TBD)

5:45-7 pm Closing Reception