Wednesday 11 March 2015 (1.00-5.30pm), Milldam LE1.04

The role of the former colonisers’ languages has been a central concern in postcolonial studies. This has generally been examined in terms of the two broad positions of appropriation and abrogation, articulated most vigorously by postcolonial writers throughout the second half of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, the debate is still relevant, with a number of questions that remain open with particular reference to postcolonial settings:

• what are the roles of local and European languages in the tension between global cultural/economic flows and local issues of identity, state-building and continued efforts towards decolonisation?
• what are the motivations and consequences in recent developments regarding language policy?
• to what extent is the metaphor of appropriation able to describe the position of European languages within the sociolinguistic scenarios?
• how can the concepts of super-diversity and language hybridity help us re-conceptualize the link between language and national identity?

In our study day we would like to bring together writers and scholars to address those questions with reference to specific contexts in Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone sub-saharan Africa.

Programme

13.00-13.15: Welcome

13.15-14.45: Anglophone and Lusophone Africa

• Prof Tope Omoniyi (Roehampton): Disseminating Public Health Information: Lessons from Ebola
• Dr Margaret Clarke (Portsmouth): Portuguese: an African Language? National Policy and Linguistic Reality in Angola and Mozambique

14.45-15.15: Tea

15.15-16.45: Francophone Africa

• Brenda Garvey (Chester): Social identity and (self)representation: the case of urban Wolof in Senegal
• Dr Felwine Sarr (Université Gaston-Berger, Saint-Louis, Senegal) – Writing as an idiomatic construction of singularity

16.45: Short break

17.00-17.30: Concluding round table

Wednesday 18 February 2015, 1.45-6.00pm

Milldam LE1.03, University of Portsmouth

This study half day will bring together scholars and students from inside and outside of the University of Portsmouth to explore new ways of studying France and Africa. Our particular focus will be on crossing boundaries – physical, temporal and methodological – and the new perspectives on Franco-African relations that can be gained from such an approach.

Some themes we will explore at this workshop include, but are not confined to:

• crossing geographical borders, to explore France’s relationships with different Francophone African territories, as well as with regions beyond the traditional French sphere on the African continent;
• breaking down chronological divides, notably between the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods;
• combining different historical outlooks, including political, economic, cultural and social perspectives on the past;
• transcending methodological boundaries, such as between different archives and diverse disciplines.

In so doing, this study half day will highlight the ways in which crossing commonly accepted boundaries sheds new light on the multi-faceted relationship between France and Africa, in both the past and the present.

Programme

1.45-1.55: Welcome

1.55 – 3.15: Panel 1 – Labour and detention

Chair: Fabienne Chamelot (Portsmouth)

• Romain Tiquet (Humboldt): From the civilization by work to the law of work: political economy and coercive methods of recruitment in (post)colonial Sénégal, 1920s – 1960s
• Ed Naylor (Portsmouth) “La salle des Africains”: Immigrant detention in Marseille during the 1960s and 1970s

3.15-3.45: Tea

3.45-5.45 – Panel 2 – Challenging geographical and chronological divides

Chair: Kelsey Suggitt (Portsmouth)

• Stephen Tyre (St. Andrews): Discovering Africa: tourism in late-colonial and post-colonial French-speaking Africa
• Roel van der Velde (Portsmouth) – Crossing borders: French arms trade and South African military strategy, 1955-1970
• Vincent Duchaussoy (Rouen/ Glasgow) The Franc zone: a successful monetary decolonisation?

5.45-6.00: Closing remarks and thanks

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Please contact francophone@port.ac.uk for more information or to register for this event.