Sixth International Conference of

Caribbean Women’s Writing

Centre for Caribbean Studies

Department of English and Comparative Literature
Goldsmiths, University of London
24 – 25 June 2011

Comparative Critical Conversations

PROGRAMME

Friday 24 June 2011 New Academic Building (NAB)

9.15-9.55 Registration: NAB3.18

10.00-10.25 Welcome: Mr Pat Loughrey, Warden, NAB3.14

10.30-11.55 Concurrent Panels, Session A

A1: Affects and Creole Poetics

Chair: Dr Jane Demarais (Goldsmiths)
Venue: NAB3.14

Sue Thomas, La Trobe University - Foundational Methodist romances: memoirs

of three eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century marriages in Antigua and
England.

Elina Valovirta, University of Turku, Finland - Blowing the love-breath: Non-

canonical affects and healing men in Caribbean women’s writing.

A2: Female Subjectivity and Gender Relations

Chair: Dr Mina Karavanta (University of Athens)
Venue: NAB3.26

Sonia Hope, Goldsmiths, University of London - Out of place? Black female

subjectivity and knowledge in Erna Brodber’s Myal (1988) and Andrea Levy’s
Fruit of the Lemon (1999).

Gloria Maestripieri, Goldsmiths, University of London - Remembering the legacy

of the enslaved: white women and black women in Paule Marshall’s The Chosen
Place the Timeless People and in Erna Brodber’s Myal.

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Nicole A. Spigner, Vanderbilt University - The Sex, Slavery, and Salvation:
Women Healers in Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads and Wild Seed by Octavia
Butler.

12.00-12.55 Conference Keynote Address

Venue: NAB3.14
Professor Maria Helena Lima, SUNY Geneseo, USA
Worlds in Comparison: Critical Paradigms that Count

1.00-2.00 LUNCH
Venue: Refectory
2.00-3.20 Concurrent Panels, Session B
B1: Auto-Theorising Texts
Chair: Professor Helen Carr (Goldsmiths)
Venue: NAB3.14

Manuela Coppola, Università della Calabria - “This is, not was”: Marlene
NourbeSe Philip’s theorizing of the archive.

Modhumita Roy, Tufts University - “Reader, I won’t marry him” - Jamaica

Kincaid’s Annie John and the Meta-critique of Romance.

Eri Hitotsuyanagi, Chukyo University - Literature of Injury and Wounding: A

Comparative Study of Autobiographical Novels by Ethnic Minorities.

B2: Spoken Word/Form/Poetics

Chair: Dr Denise deCaires Narain (University of Sussex)
Venue: NAB3.26

Sheree Mack, Open University - Crossing Boundaries: Poetry and Performance:

Jean 'Binta' Breeze and Khadija Ibrahiim.

Marl’ene Edwin, Goldsmiths, University of London – ‘Strange Arrivants’: Creole

Conversations in the short stories of Sam Selvon and Olive Senior.

Suzanne Scafe, London South Bank University - ‘Re-vision’ as poetic form,

cultural practice and ideological necessity: Dorothea Smartt’s ‘Medusa? Medusa
Black!’ and the ‘Samboo’ cycle.

3.20-3.30 TEA – NAB Refectory

3.30-4.55 Concurrent Panels, Session C

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C1: Writing our Americas
Chair: Dr Padraig Kirwan (Goldsmiths)
Venue: NAB3.14

Maria Cristina Fumagalli, University of Essex - Anacaona – Whose Golden

Flower?

Victoria Bridges Moussaron, Université de Lille III - Diasporic Remembering:

Punctuation, Prosopopeia, and Presence in Jamaica Kincaid's Mr. Potter.  

Natasha Bonnelame, Goldsmiths, University of London - Flights of the

Imagination: Reconfiguring Caribbean Modernity in Erna Brodber’s Myal.

C2: Creolisation and Diaspora

Chair: Dr Suzanne Scafe (London South Bank University)
Venue: NAB3.26

Giovanna Covi, University of Trento - Poetics of Relation: The Caribbean in Jazz,

from Music through Literature to Theory.

Christine Vogt-William, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt -

Gender, Mixed Race Relations and Dougla Identities in Indo-Caribbean Women’s
Fiction.

Deirdre Osborne, Goldsmiths, University of London - Trading Places: New

Definitions of ‘Here’ and ‘There’ in Diasporic Drama.

5.00-6.00 Writers Conference Address

Venue: Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre
Whitehead Building
M NourbeSe Philip, Poet and Author
The Memory of Water in the Silence of History

6.15-7.00 Drinks

7.15-9.00 Conference Dinner

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Saturday 25 June 2011

8.15-8.55 Registration: Council Chamber

Deptford Town Hall (DTH)

9.00-10.20 Concurrent Panels, Session D

D1: Writing the Postnational/Transnational

Chair: Dr Giovanna Covi (University of Trento)
Venue: DTH109

Destiny Birdsong, Vanderbilt University - Close Calls: Maternal Trauma,

Knowledge Transmission, and Transnational Identity in Paule Marshall’s Brown
Girl, Brownstones.

Kaisa Ilmonen, University of Turku - Ritual Storytelling as a Form of

Transnational Solidarity in Free Enterprise by Michelle Cliff.

Mathilde Mergeai, Université de Liège - Beyond the Caribbean: Dionne Brand’s

What We All Long For, a Post-National Text?

D2: Historical Trauma and Literary Imagination

Chair: Dr Sally Barbour (Wake Forest University)
Venue: DTH110

Rachel Grace Thompson, Goldsmiths, University of London - Ghosts of History:

The Traumatic Past in the Caribbean Present.

Simon Lee, College of Science Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad &Tobago
- Dealing With and Healing the Horror.

10.30-11.55 Concurrent Panels, Session E

E1: Poet’s World/Poetic Performance

Chair: Chair: Dr Karina Smith (Victoria University)
Venue: DTH109

Anne Collett, University of Wollongong - Kite and Quilt: Olive Senior’s

exploration of her poetic inheritance.

Joanna Johnson, University of Miami - (Re)Framing the Landscape: Grace

Nichols’ Depictions of England.

Lamia Tewfik, Sadat Academy - Ekphrastic Memory: Chasing and Escaping

African Roots in Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Zong!

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E2: Creole Versions
Chair: Dr Sheree Mack (Open University)
Venue: DTH110

Radost Rangelova, Gettysburg College - The Labor of/on the Body: Space, Gender
and Technologies of the Self in the Beauty Salon.

Denise deCaires Narain, University of Sussex - Intersections of Difference: Creole

and Queer in Conversation.

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, King's College London - The After-Life of Jean Rhys’

Antoinette Cosway in Ne0-Victorian Fiction.

12.00-12.45 Plenary Lecture

Venue: Council Chamber. DTH

Dr Mina Karavanta, University of Athens, Greece

Caribbean Women’s Postnational Re-writings: Subaltern Pasts, “Signifying
Minority” Narratives and Diasporic Cartographies Shifting the Topography of
Planetarity in the Present.

12.45-13.25 Lunch

13.30-14.55 Concurrent Panels, Session F

F1: Histories
Chair: Professor Sue Thomas (La Trobe University)
Venue: DTH109

Joan Anim-Addo, Goldsmiths, University of London – Creole Transnational

Aesthetics and ‘Disassociation’: Excavating Women’s Histories in Austin Clarke’s
The Polished Hoe and Merle Collins’s The Colour of Forgetting.

Marta Fernández Campa, University of Miami, Florida - New Archives of

Memory in the poetry of Dorothea Smartt and Roshini Kempadoo’s photography.

Karina Smith, Victoria University, Melbourne - Flynn’s Daughters, Female

Adventurers: gender re-configurations in Margaret Cezair- Thompson’s The
Pirate’s Daughter and Scott Rankin’s Beasty Girl: the secret life of Errol Flynn.

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F2: Intersections and Methodologies
Chair: Professor Maria Lima, (SUNY Geneseo, USA)
Venue: DTH110

Jo Collins, The University of Kent at Canterbury - ‘Between Worlds’: mapping

Diaspora in and across Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Nelly
Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints.

Emma Louise Burch, Goldsmiths, University of London - Mapping Histories:

Intersecting Oppressions of the Female Subject.

Henghameh Saroukhani, University of Leeds - Becoming Minor(ity):

Methodological Cosmopolitanism in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.

15.00-16.00 Comparative Critical Conversations

Roundtable: Why Caribbean Women’s
Writing Matters in the Academy Now!
Venue: Council Chamber, DTH

16.10-17.00 Poetry Reading & Drinks

Venue: Council Chamber, DTH

Room Key:

NAB = New Academic Building

DTH = Deptford Town Hall
CC = Council Chamber

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