African Literature Association
33rd Annual Convention
“African Literature and the Dynamics of Globalization”
Morgantown, West Virginia March 14-18 2007
Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi
People used to flying to conferences in big cities will find the journey to Morgantown, West Virginia cumbersome. Travellers have to fly to Pittsburg and take a bus or taxi into the small city – or drive a rented car. Since the bus leaves at fixed times, the taxi service may be much more time-efficient. Otherwise, conference visitors have long waits ahead of them. In retrospect, I think some scholars may have stayed away from Morgantown to avoid the uneasy connections. Yet, the stops and lurches in getting into and out of Morgantown contributed immensely to a very rewarding conference experience that began at the Pittsburg airport arrival lounge where I found conference visitors awaiting their busses and taxis.
Weeks before the meeting, in planning transits to Morgantown, conveners sent chains of emails to prospective participants but I made private plans to hitch a ride from Pittsburg to Morgantown with a colleague on the 15th. There was a last minute change to the date of my presentation; as such I had to fly to Pittsburg on the 14th, which means I arrived without a prearranged transportation to the conference venue itself. It was the first time I found myself at an airport lounge with conference delegates. The two-hour wait allowed me to become acquainted with colleagues. I enjoyed talking to people about their work and the papers they would be presenting. In fact, the time I spent at the lounge struck me as a ‘happy hour’ without the drinks. But I am sure delegates who flew in from Japan or Europe on more arduous connecting flights would probably see it otherwise. I eventually shared a cab with colleagues from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Babson College. The arrival at the hotel, checking in and conference registration went without glitches.
The conference began on Wednesday March 14, with a reception followed by a plenary on the conference theme: “African literature and the Dynamics of Globalization.” The plenary session was certainly one of the highlights of the four day meeting. It involved Dennis Brutus of South Africa, Syl Cheney-Coker of Sierra Leone and Nawal El Saadawi from Egypt. The three speakers presented different perspectives on globalization’s cultural manifestations. Denis Brutus talked about the importance of the 1999 Seattle protests for mobilising grassroots activists across the globe; Cheney-Coker’s was more historical and addressed the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and New World plantation slavery in the Americas. Nawal El Saadawi concentrated on the consequences of her activities as a writer in Egypt. The audience responded with a battery of questions after the talks; I had the impression that the questioners and respondents were trying to grapple with the various functions of literature in disparate African settings. In fact, the gaps between the three writers’ concerns attested to the plurality of conversations going on at the conference. I wished the writers had been asked to speak to each other’s talks more directly—it would have been interesting to hear Saadawi and Brutus respond to Coker’s interest in slavery. And it would have been important to have the latter articulate more directly the connections between the legacies of slavery and the Seattle protests.
Conference Notes page 2 (continues) >>