.jpg)
African Literature Beyond the Independence Era
Visit dates to be confirmed for 2021/22
Biography
Jeanne-Marie Jackson is an assistant professor of world Anglophone literature at Johns Hopkins University, and received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale. She is the author of two monographs: South African Literature’s Russian Soul (Bloomsbury 2015), and the soon forthcoming The African Novel of Ideas (Princeton 2021). Her third book, a conceptual classroom guide to twenty-first century African writing, is under contract with Routledge. In addition to her expertise on anglophone African literature, Jackson works across Russian, Afrikaans, Shona, and Anglo-Fante literary traditions. She writes regularly for both scholarly and public-facing venues, and is editor of the “Field Reports” blog at Modernism/modernity.
Summary
'African Literature Beyond the Independence Era' will consist of a multi-day faculty and graduate student workshop on studying African literature from the colonial and pre-colonial periods. Over three intensive meetings, we will discuss a number of key recent inter mentions in these fields drawn from literary and cultural studies as well as history, with an intention to map future paths for relevant inter-institutional collaboration. Professor Jackson will offer a public lecture on Abram Petrovich Gannibal, the man from present-day Cameroon who was “adopted” as a godson by the eighteenth-century Russian Tsar Peter the Great before going on to become a revered and multifaceted intellectual figure. Its aim will be to position Gannibal as a figure with the potential to structure thinking across Russian, English, and African intellectual histories.
Dr Jackson is hosted by Professor Madhu Krishnan, English.
