Postcolonial studies has a vexed relationship to its own canonicity. It has consistently problematized its institutionalization, especially in the US university. Given this field-defining ambivalence, as well as the relative heterogeneity of its geopolitical sites and subjects of study, ranging South Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East, how has contemporary scholarship made sense of the postcolonial as an evolving analytic? After three decades of debating the term, can we generate a singular postcolonial method? Thinking with concepts including "farce," "impropriety," "the plantation," "subalternity," "comparison," "accentedness," and the Anglophone, this symposium showcases new directions in thinking with the postcolonial and its limits today.
Co-presented by Northwestern's Kaplan Humanities Institute and Department of English, the symposium features nine scholars from across the country: Rose Casey (West Virginia U), Sarah Dimick (English, Northwestern), Jarvis McInnis (Duke), Nasser Mufti (Univ. of Illinois at Chicago), Kalyan Nadiminti (English, Northwestern), Lakshmi Padmanabhan (Radio/TV/Film, Northwestern), Kaneesha Parsard (Univ. of Chicago), Joseph Slaughter (Columbia), and Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan (Rice).
Panels will be moderated by graduate students from Northwestern English and Comparative Literary Studies, with opening and closing remarks offered by Laura Brueck (Kaplan Institute & Asian Languages and Cultures) and Kalyan Nadiminti (English).
No RSVP is required—Drop in as you can!
Schedule
8:45-9:00 am: Coffee/Snacks
9:00-9:05 am: Opening Remarks (Kalyan Nadiminti, Northwestern)
9:05-10:35 am - Panel 1
“On Accented Reading,” Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan (Rice)
“Impropriety as Postcolonial Method,” Rose Casey (West Virginia University)
Moderator: Ishan Mehandru (Northwestern)
10:35-10:45 am: Short break
10:45 am-12:45 pm - Panel 2
“Postcolonial Farce,” Nasser Mufti (University of Illinois, Chicago)
“Afterlives of the Plantation in the Global Black South: Rethinking the Geographies and
Ecologies of Black Modernity,” Jarvis McInnis (Duke University)
“The Unhoused Poem,” Sarah Dimick (Northwestern)
Moderator: Samuel Aftel (Northwestern)
12:45-1:45 pm: Lunch at the Kaplan Seminar Room (Kresge Hall, Room 2350)
2:00-3:30 pm - Panel 3
“After Contrapuntality, or Late Magical Realism,” Kalyan Nadiminti (Northwestern)
“Subaltern Realism,” Lakshmi Padmanabhan (Northwestern)
Moderator: Govind Narayan Ponnuchamy (Northwestern)
3:30-3:40 pm: Short break
3:40-5:10 pm - Panel 4
“Suspended: Reading Dispossession in the Late Colonial West Indies,” Kaneesha Parsard
(University of Chicago)
“Pedagogies of the Invisible: Forensic Fiction in Search of a Forum,” Joseph Slaughter
(Columbia University)
Moderator: Isabel Griffith-Gorgati (Northwestern)
5:10-5:20 pm: Closing Remarks (Laura Brueck, Northwestern)
5:30-6:30pm: Closing Reception, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
Jill Mannor
(847) 467-3970
Email