ASWAD: Onwueme conference--CFP

International Conference

Osonye Tess Onwueme: Staging Women, Youth, Globalization, and Eco-literature

University of Abuja, Abuja, FCT, Nigeria

(November 11 - 14, 2009)

Osonye Tess Onwueme, Distinguished Professor of Cultural Diversity and English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is currently, one of the best known and most prolific women playwrights of African descent . She is a winner of several international awards, including a Ford Foundation research award. She was recently appointed to the US State Department Public Diplomacy Specialist/Speaker Program for North, West, and East India.

This conference focuses centrally on Tess Onwueme as a playwright, scholar, activist, and producer whose works explore a wide range of social, political, historical, cultural and environmental concerns of Nigerians, specifically, women, youth, and people of the Niger Delta, as well as Africans on the continent and in the African Diaspora. We encourage individual paper and panel proposals which address various aspects of Onwueme's works, including, but not limited to, those delineated above. Below are additional possible suggestions of broad topics:

Feminist theories and the drama of Osonye Tess Onwueme;

Onwueme in dialogue with the African Diaspora;

Onwueme, activism and iconoclasm;

Women, nation and the post-nation in Africa and across the Atlantic;

Women, gender, and power;

Onwueme and the Nigerian Niger Delta;

Onwueme, drama and oil politics; Onwueme and eco-politics/literature;

Onwueme and performance/production;

Postcoloniality and survival; Urbanity and the nation;

Politics and the Youth;

Mothering and modernity in Onwueme's drama;

Culture, tradition and the nation in Onwueme's drama;

Language and aesthetics in Onwueme's drama;

Onwueme: interrogating globalization;

Onwueme's drama as dance; and Teaching Tess Onwueme's plays.

Please send abstracts and panel proposals to the conveners:

Professor Maureen Ngozi Eke (Central Michigan University, USA) maureen.eke@cmich.edu and Professor Onookome Okome (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada) ookome@ualberta.ca

Extended Deadline: July 10, 2009

Co-conveners: Prof. Oty Agbajoh-Laoye (Monmouth University, USA) olaoye@monmouth.edu; Prof. Mabel Evwierhoma (University of Abuja, FCT, Nigeria) mabtobrhoma2002@yahoo.com;

Prof. Irene Salami (University of Jos, Nigeria) irenesalami@yahoo.com

International Organizing Committee:

Prof. Kanika Batra (Texas Technological Univ. USA) kanika.batra@ttu.edu; Prof. Becky Becker (Columbus State Univ., USA) becker_becky@colstate.edu; Prof. Sonia Darlington (Beloit College, USA) darling@beloit.edu

Steve Daniel (Director of Theater, ABU, Zaria, Nigeria) ogastevedaniel@yahoo.com

Maureen N. Eke, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
989-774-3117 (voice)
989-774-3171 (main office)
989-774-1271 (fax)
maureen.eke@cmich.edu or
eke1mn@cmich.edu