Africa comes to University

Even in the 21st century, Africa is perceived as exotic and dangerous.

That’s one of the misperceptions that this weekend’s Cultural Studies Conference will try to correct. “Representations of Africa” was inspired by a graduate class Marie Chantale Mofin Noussi and Lucie Florence Ceylan took two semesters ago.

Noussi said the conference will be an extension of the course.
“People from all over the world are coming and talking about this issue,” Ceylan said. “It’s just amazing. Just that we’re bringing this whole community to UNM, to me that’s just mind-blowing.”

Professor Jason Wilby said he facilitated the conference for the past three years. He said the idea struck two grad students last semester, and they presented the idea to a committee of other grad students and professors.

“The whole discussion of Africa is tied to a very complex web of discourses about identity and mixed in there are colonial notions of superiority and racial inferiority,” he said.

With help from two other graduate students, Noussi and Ceylan built the conference from the ground up. They chartered an organization and sent out a call for papers to universities in other state and countries.

They narrowed down 26 responses to five panels that will take place over two days, highlighted by keynote speaker Dr. Elisabeth Boyi, a Stanford professor and specialist on African and Caribbean and literature.

Boyi will present her paper “From Ifrikiya to Africa: Real Continent, Imaginary Space” and will be the focus of the seminar-style conference workshop at the end of the second day.

Ceylan said the panelists, coming from all over the U.S., the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico and South Africa, will provide different lenses to view Africa. She said it’s a burning issue in academia.
“We’re so happy that people from all over the world are coming,” Ceylan said. “It’ll be very interesting to see what they have to say.”