CROSSROADS: MIGRATION, LANGUAGE, AND LITERATURE IN AFRICA

Thursday, February 25 - Saturday, February 27, 2010
A Rutgers University Symposium
 
 
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Conference Description

This conference is designed to foster trans-disciplinary understanding of the complex interplay between language, literature and migration, and of the varied patterns of language and literary movement, formation and practice arising from contemporary and historical migration within, to and from Africa. Since antiquity Africa has been a locus of linguistic, literary and cultural interchange with communities from around the world. The advent of European colonialism on the continent and the impact of more recent articulations of globalization have added to both the scope and complexity of these cultural interconnections. These interactions have often involved human migration, a process that has profound sociolinguistic and literary consequences for the recipient society, the society of origin and the migrants themselves. Uprooted from familiar sociolinguistic contexts, migrants may find themselves reconstituted as ethno-linguistic minorities elsewhere, seeking to inscribe themselves in the new “host” communities --which are themselves often transformed by the arrival of the immigrants -- through new linguistic, literary and cultural practices. At times, however, the migration has been primarily textual, facilitated by scholarly exchanges, translation, and religious conversion. This two day conference will be concerned with both these dimensions of migration and its relationship to language and literature in global Africa.







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Center for African Studies
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
99 Ave E Livingston College, Beck Hall Room 204, Piscataway NJ 08854-8045
Phone: (732) 445-6638 Fax: (732) 445-6637
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