On 28-30 March, the University of Houston will be hosting a conference themed “(Re)membering Africa: Women’s Narratives on the Continent and Beyond.”

In an email to Brittle Paper, the novelist Novuyo Rosa Tshuma explained that the event, which is organised by the university’s graduate students, will feature the Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga and the American scholar Susan Andrade.

Below is the press release.

(Re)membering Africa: Women’s Narratives on the Continent and Beyond

The event, “(Re)membering Africa: Women’s Narratives on the Continent and Beyond,” will be held March 28-30 at the University of Houston Student Center. Celebrating African and African-American literature and film created by women, the conference was organized by a team of University of Houston graduate students led by the writer, scholar and PhD candidate Maurine Ogbaa.

On Friday morning, the keynote talk will be given by Professor Susan Andrade. Professor Andrade is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh where she holds a joint appointment in French, and affiliations with the Centers for African, Asian, Latin American, and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. A leading literary critic on African fiction, she has written extensively about the incorporation of women’s nationalism and African feminism into literature. Her work also deals with literary modernism and realism through an interrogation of critical theory.

The featured guest for “(Re)membering Africa” is the acclaimed Zimbabwean novelist and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga. Dangarembga’s novel, Nervous Conditions, was named one of the “100 stories that shaped the world” by the BBC and has been a mainstay of college literature and history courses for nearly thirty years. In addition to being a novelist, Tsitsi Dangarembga has been writing, directing and producing films in Zimbabwe for over twenty years. Her films have been shown in Southern Africa and in Europe. She is the founder of a women’s film collective which teaches screenwriting, directing and production.

On Friday afternoon, Dangarembga will speak about literature at Texas Southern University’s University Museum. On Saturday evening, following the screening of her film, Nyami Nyami and the Evil Eggs, at the UH Student Center Theatre, Dangarembga will discuss her work as a film maker.

Discussion of academic papers will be held throughout the day on Friday and Saturday. Saturday will also include a Creative Writing Workshop moderated by Houston transplant and University of Houston PhD student Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. Tshuma’s critically acclaimed novel House of Stone was recently reviewed by The Houston Chronicle and The New York Times.

All of the events are open and free to the public. The weekend’s events are guaranteed to be a great interest to writers of all stages, to film enthusiasts and aspiring filmmakers, and to lovers of world literature and cinema.

For queries, please contact Maurine Ogbaa at [email protected].