We are pleased to invite you to the fourth lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2023/2024 Fall semester

Agnieszka Rzepa
(Adam Mickiewicz University)

“What are you?”: Canadian Black and Multiracial Writers on Race, Home, and (Un)belonging

Thursday, December 14, 2023
at 4:45 p.m.

You can get 3 OZN points for participating in this event.

Where?

Dobra 55, room 2.118
(the building features some mobility accommodations: ramp and lift)

What?

Canada’s relatively small, but highly diversified black population, holds a different position within the contemporary multicultural framework than the black minority in the United States. While similarly affected in the past by enslavement and segregation, and still subject to discrimination and race-based violence, it has remained much less visible within the cultural landscape of the country. This lecture focuses on life-writing texts—memoirs and personal essays, the majority published in the 21 st century—by Canadian black and multiracial (though black-identifying) writers. The discussion will include texts by Esi Edugyan, David Chariandy, Dionne Brand, Tessa McWatt and other authors. Their reflections on race, home and vagaries of belonging, which often range far beyond Canada, will be nevertheless discussed against the backdrop of specifically Canadian historical, social and cultural contexts.

Who?

Prof. Agnieszka Rzepa is head of the Canadian Literature Research Unit at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. She has taught and conducted research on Canadian literature since the early 1990s, focusing on contemporary Canadian fiction, Canadian postcolonial studies, as well as Indigenous Canadian literatures and Canadian life writing. Her publications include the monographs Feats and defeats of memory: Exploring spaces of Canadian magic realism (2009) and The self and the world. Aspects of the aesthetics and politics of contemporary North American literary memoir by women (2018; With Dagmara Drewniak and Katarzyna Macedulska) as well as edited collections of articles Eyes Deep with Unfathomable Histories: The Poetics and Politics of Magic Realism Today and in the Past (2012; with Liliana Sikorska) and Kanada z bliska: historia-literatura-przekład (2012; with Alicja Żuchelkowska).

Year 2024/2025

December 17: We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice

December 11, 2024

During the workshop “We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice”, Aleksandra Julia Malinowska, a doctoral candidate at the University of Warsaw,will delve into the history of feminist manifestos and their pivotal role in the women’s movement in the United States. We’ll explore how activists of the second wave of feminism used grassroots publications to raise awareness, voice the demands of emerging women’s groups, and build communication networks between organizations spread across the country. Together, we’ll analyze the literary techniques that make the manifesto genre a powerful tool for inspiring activist mobilization beyond the pages of the text.

News

ASC Offices Holiday Break

December 10, 2024

The ASC Offices and Library will be closed for the winter holiday from December 23, 2024, to January 6, 2025.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 12: Technological Imaginaries and the Universal Ambitions of Silicon Valley

December 5, 2024

Drawing on her new book, Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist imaginaries and the politics of digital technologies (University of California Press), in this talk Ferrari shows how these discourses, which she calls “technological imaginaries”, shape how we experience digital technologies. She discusses how, for the past 30 years, Silicon Valley tech actors have produced and popularized a specific way of thinking about digital technologies, which has become mainstream. This dominant technological imaginary brings together technocratic aspirations and populist justifications. While arising out of the peculiarities of Silicon Valley and of the American 1990s, this dominant imaginary has posited its universality by presenting its tenets as if they were global, unbiased, and equally suitable for everyone, everywhere. She argues that to really curb the socio-political influence of Big Tech companies we also need to understand, critique, and resist the power of their technological imaginary.

Year 2024/2025

10 Grudnia: Odmieńczość: Obywatelstwo Seksualne i Archiwum – Premiera Książki

December 5, 2024

Zapraszamy na dyskusję z udziałem prof. Tomasza Basiuka, prof. Agnieszki Kościańskiej i dra Jędrzeja Burszty, redaktorów książki “Odmieńczość: obywatelstwo seksualne i archiwum”, która ukaże się nakładem Wydawnictw Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Rozmowę poprowadzi dr Ludmiła Janion.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 5: Reinventing the Past to Change the Future: Alt-History and Reactionary Futurity

December 5, 2024

This presentation examines “alt-history” as a mode of reactionary worldbuilding, with a focus on how far-right influencers use alternate histories to reshape public understandings of the past and galvanize political action. Through examples like Tucker Carlson’s Patriot Purge and Dinesh D’Souza’s Death of a Nation, the talk explores how reactionary narratives blend science fictional techniques with conspiracy fantasies to legitimize authoritarian politics. The discussion includes a genealogy of the right-wing myth of “liberal fascism,” tracing its evolution and role in contemporary ideological landscapes shaped by historical revisionism and speculative worldbuilding.