idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
Speaker: Alexandra Reza, University of Bristol
17 February 2025, 18:30 (CET)
Online (Zoom) & Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (KWI), Goethestraße 31, 45128 Essen
Literary journals proliferated across colonial Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa in the decades around decolonization. In her lecture, literary scholar Alexandra Reza (University of Bristol) focuses on two of the most influential publications with the widest international reach: Présence Africaine (published in Paris from 1947) and Mensagem (published in Lisbon from 1946-64) to discuss questions of method, gender, and form.
Neither journal published much work ascribed to women in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Like many nationalist organizations, these literary institutions were patriarchal spaces, underpinned by norms of sociality that marginalized women, particularly black women. Two questions emerge here. First, what divisions of labour underpinned the journals and shaped their form? Often unrecognized as authors, women contributed significantly to the journals' work as translators. Second, what did the few women who were published say? Published women articulated a multiscalar anticolonial sensibility that integrated gendered experiences and domestic spaces into anti-colonial politics, challenging rigid gender categories as forms of colonial enclosure. Their diverse perspectives extended beyond the journals’ prevailing gender-neutral political independence and emancipation discussions. Parsing these journals requires modes of reading alive to these cracks and fragments, to understand the literary journal as a form of thought comprised of—rather than compromised by—its dissonances, polyphony and contestations.
The evening lecture is part of the workshop „Politics and Literature in Postwar European Journals (1945-1975)“.
SPEAKER
Alexandra Reza, University of Bristol
ORGANIZATION
Karel Pletinck, KWI International Fellow
PARTICIPATION ONLINE
To participate online via ZOOM, use the link published on the KWI website at the given time.
PARTICIPATION IN PERSON
This is a public event and participation is free of charge. There is no registration necessary.
ORGANIZATION
Organized by the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI).
About the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI):
The Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen, Germany, is an interdisciplinary research centre following the tradition of international Institutes for Advanced Study. In its role as an inter-university institution connecting the Ruhr-University Bochum, the Technological University Dortmund and the University of Duisburg-Essen, the institute works together with researchers and scientists from its neighbouring universities as well as other partners from the federal state NRW and places in- and outside of Germany. Within the Ruhr area, the KWI is a place to share and discuss the questions and results of ambitious research with interested parties from the city and the greater region. Currently, work at the KWI focuses on the following areas: “cultural studies of science and science policy making”, “sociology of literature and culture”, “science communication”, “visual literacy” and a “teaching lab”. Projects in the established research field “culture of communication”, as well as individual projects, will be continued. www.kulturwissenschaften.de
https://www.kulturwissenschaften.de/veranstaltung/lecture-gender-work-and-decolo... Event on the KWI website
Covers of the magazines “Présence Africaine” and „Mensagem“
Criteria of this press release:
Journalists, Scientists and scholars, Students, all interested persons
Cultural sciences, History / archaeology, Language / literature, Politics, Social studies
transregional, national
Miscellaneous scientific news/publications
English
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