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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Dr. Layne will present in a Du Bois-Lecture on December 13th, 2018, 7 pm at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin from the first chapter of her current book project on Afro-German Afrofuturism. In the talk she uses an Afrofuturist lens to interpret Olumide Popoola’s play “Also by Mail” (2013). Set in both Nigeria and Germany, the play centers around the Afro-German siblings Wale and Funke, who travel to Nigeria to attend the funeral of their recently deceased father. Their presence in Nigeria stirs up numerous conflicts. Having grown up in Germany with a white mother, the siblings are repeatedly othered by their Nigerian relatives. While they don’t identify with Germany as theirs due to the racial discrimination they have experienced there, they don’t quite feel at home in Nigeria either. Fantasy enters the text through Funke, whose battle with a case of Malaria brings on a fever that either facilitates a meeting or creates the fantasy of a meeting with her dead father who comes to share some wisdom with her from beyond the grave.
In this talk, Layne argues that Popoola incorporates both Afrofuturist thought and Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” to argue for the necessity of hope for a better future even in the absence of teleological determination.
Priscilla Layne is an associate professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her BA at the University of Chicago, and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. After her undergraduate studies, Layne received a Fulbright teaching fellowship in Berlin, followed by a grant from the Study Foundation of the Berlin Parliament to conduct a qualitative analysis of the leftist skinhead scene. Layne is author of “White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture” (Michigan, 2018) and co-editor of “Rebellion and Revolution: Defiance in German Language, History, and Art” (with Melissa Etzler, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). Her work has been supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Institute for African American Research, among others. Layne has also received several grants from the German Embassy to develop programming on the University of North Carolina campus.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures are sponsored by: Institute for the International Education of Students (IES), Embassy of the United States of America, Berlin, and Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Information on participating / attending:
Date:
12/13/2018 19:00 - 12/13/2018 21:00
Event venue:
Humboldt-Universität
Dorotheenstr. 24 (Hegelplatz)
Room 1.501
10117 Berlin
Berlin
Germany
Target group:
all interested persons
Relevance:
regional
Subject areas:
Language / literature
Types of events:
Presentation / colloquium / lecture
Entry:
12/11/2018
Sender/author:
Boris Nitzsche
Department:
Abteilung Kommunikation, Marketing und Veranstaltungsmanagement
Event is free:
no
Language of the text:
English
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event62345
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