Edwidge Danticat Society: ALA 29 (2018)

The American Literature Association Conference

May 24-27, 2018

Hyatt Regency, San Francisco, CA

The Edwidge Danticat Society invites papers for our affiliate panel at the 29th Annual American Literature Association conference in San Francisco, California. In celebration of the Ford Foundation awarding Danticat the Art of Change Fellowship, we seek papers that examine the ever-present intersections between Art and Justice in Danticat’s work. Whether cultural commentary in the essay: “DACA, Hurricane Irma, and Young Americans’ Dreams Deferred,” postcolonial ecocriticism in the novel: Claire of the Sea Light, or critical commentary on the Immigration Industrial Complex in the memoir: Brother, I’m Dying, Danticat’s activist and literary work are inextricable.

The Edwidge Danticat Society invites proposals for 15-minute presentations, and possible topics addressing her overall work include, but are not limited to:

• Danticat’s cultural commentary on global anti-blackness
• Ecocriticism in her literature
• Criticism on Migration and the Immigration Industrial Complex
• Creating Dangerously through reading and writing  
• Black Lives Matter Movement and Immigrants of Color
• Poto Mitan: Haitian women, work and resistance
• Memory, Counter-archiving and the Trujillo and/or Duvalier dictatorships

By December 18, 2017, please submit a 150 word biography, 300 word abstract (including working title) and any a/v needs to Megan Feifer, megan.feifer@edwidgedanticatsociety.org.

Membership with the Edwidge Danticat Society (www.edwidgedanticatsociety.org) is required for panelists, but it is not required to submit proposals for consideration.

Membership dues to the Edwidge Danticat Society (www.edwidgedanticatsociety.org) and ALA conference registration (www.americanliteratureassociation.org) must be paid by April 15, 2018, or papers/panels will not appear in the conference program.  

Congrats, Edwidge Danticat on your Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship!

Check out the new Edwidge Danticat website!

Read Edwidge Danticat’s latest article “DACA, Hurricane Irma, and Young Americans Dreams’ Deferred” in The New Yorker.

It is our pleasure to announce that the Edwidge Danticat Society’s affiliated panels at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference in Atlanta this year will be two in number and will feature work that addresses storytelling, (counter)narrative, histories and the nation in Danticat’s work. We hope to see you there for some great critical exchange! Here are our panel details:

Edwidge Danticat Society Panel One:
“Homes, Identities, and Geographies in the Literature of Edwidge Danticat”
South Atlantic Modern Language Association 89
Atlanta, GA · Westin Peachtree · November 3-5, 2017

Panel Chair: Dr. Maia Butler, Assistant Professor,
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Founding Vice President of Edwidge Danticat Society

Hannah Hjerpe-Schroeder, Ph.D. Student
Emory University
“‘You are also held captive in this prism’: Refracted Light and Diasporic Narrative Formation
in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones.”

Dr. Alison Van Nyhuis, Associate Professor of English
Fayetteville State University, a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina
“Storytelling in Caribbean Migration Literature:
American Dreams and Nightmares in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.”

Joyce White, Doctoral Student in Humanities & African American Studies
Clark Atlanta University
“Lòt Bó Dlo: The Other Side of the Water”

Asmaa Mansour, Ph.D. Student
The University of Texas, San Antonio
“Can Narrating the Nation Reconcile Feminism/Mothering with Nationalism?: Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Abouzeid’s “Year of the Elephant” as Case Studies.”

Edwidge Danticat Society Panel Two:
“Memory, Orality, and Silence in the Literature of Edwidge Danticat”
South Atlantic Modern Language Association 89
Atlanta, GA · Westin Peachtree · November 3-5, 2017

Panel Chair: Dr. Maia Butler, Assistant Professor,
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Founding Vice President of Edwidge Danticat Society

Norrell Edwards, doctoral candidate in English literature
University of Maryland, College Park
“Resuscitating Haitian History through Fiction.”

Marilyn Jones, Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures Cardinal
Stritch University in Milwaukee, WI
“An Afrorealist reading of Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak!

Andy Fentem, Doctoral Candidate in Literary Studies
Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
“In Other Words: Voicing Voicelessness in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker.”

We’re excited to announce that there will be several papers on Edwidge Danticat at the Northeast MLA conference in March.

There are back-to-back panels with the title: 20th- and 21st-century Ethnic American Literature: Home and the Immigrant Imagination (Sessions 7.16 and 8.16 on Friday, March 24 from 1:15 to 4:45pm).

Dr. Maria Rice Bellamy is chairing the first panel and delivering a paper called “Home and Heart in Edwidge Danticat’s Memoirs: Brother I’m Dying and After the Dance.”

The second panel is chaired by Kara Fontenot and will include two papers on Danticat:

Edwidge Danticat Society: SAMLA 89 (2017)
The South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference
November 3-5, 2017 The Westin Peachtree Plaza Atlanta, GA

Storytelling in the Literature of Edwidge Danticat

The Edwidge Danticat Society invites papers for our affiliate panel at the 89th Annual South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The theme of this year’s conference is High Art/Low Art: Borders and Boundaries in Popular Culture. We welcome papers that examine stories and storytelling in the literature of Edwidge Danticat, who has been referred to as “Haiti’s Storyteller.” Storytelling as an art, a family pastime, and a communal undertaking is ubiquitous in Danticat’s oeuvre, whether invoked in the artifice of her literature, represented through her characters, or discussed in her cultural commentary.

The Edwidge Danticat Society invites proposals for 15-minute presentations, and possible topics addressing storytelling include, but are not limited to:

● Survival and/or resistance during precarious times
● Testimonio, dangerous creation
● Narrativity and form
● Tradition and/or collective memory
● Literary influence
● Audience and literary reception
● Identity and performativity

By May 20, 2017, please submit a 150 word biography, 300 word abstract (including working title) and any a/v needs to Megan Feifer, megan.feifer@edwidgedanticatsociety.org or Maia Butler, maia.butler@edwidgedanticatsociety.org.

Membership with the Edwidge Danticat Society (www.edwidgedanticatsociety.org) is required for panelists, but it is not required to submit proposals for consideration. South Atlantic MLA membership and conference registration (samla.memberclicks.net/conference) must be paid by August 31st, 2017, or papers/panels will not appear in the conference program.

The American Literature Association Conference
May 25-28, 2017
The Westin Copley Place in Boston, MA

The Edwidge Danticat Society invites papers for a panel at the 28h Annual American Literature Association conference. We welcome papers that explore the expanse of Danticat’s work across many genres. As a prolific author, she has produced short stories, the collection Krik! Krak! (1996) and novel-in-stories The Dew Breaker (2004); several novels Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), The Farming of Bones (1998), and Claire of the Sea Light (2013); three young adult novels, Beyond the Mountains (2002) and Anacaona: Golden Flower, Haiti, 1490, which belong to series, and her latest works Untwine (2015); and Mama’s Nightingale (2015), a children’s picture book. She has embraced life writing, producing two memoirs in what might be considered the collective mode, Brother, I’m Dying (2007) and Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (2010). She has edited several anthologies, The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora (2001), Haiti Noir (2011), and Best American Essays (2011); written a travel narrative, After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, and is also an essay contributor for The New Yorker. Beyond this, Danticat has written and narrated two films, Poto Mitan (2009) and Girl Rising (2013).

The Edwidge Danticat Society invites proposals for 15-minute presentations. Possible topics include:

· The collective memoir, testimonio, and non-traditional archives in Danticat’s memoirs
· Danticat’s role as anthology editor, promoting the literature of the Haitian dyaspora · The literary in Danticat’s work in film
· Danticat’s op-editorial and essay contributions

By December 20, 2016, please submit a 150 word biography, 300 word abstract (including working title) and any a/v needs to Megan Feifer, megan.feifer@edwidgedanticatsociety.org or Maia Butler, maia.butler@edwidgedanticatsociety.org.

Membership with the Edwidge Danticat Society is required for panelists, but it is not required to submit proposals for consideration.

Membership dues to the Edwidge Danticat Society (www.edwidgedanticatsociety.org) must be paid by March 15, 2017. American Literature Association conference registration (www.americanliteratureassociation.org) must be paid by March 15, 2017, or papers/panels will not appear in the conference program.

Edwidge Danticat Society Panel – at SAMLA Conference, Nov 4-6, 2016
Name of organization: Edwidge Danticat Society
Contact email: maia.butler@edwidgedanticatsociety.org

“Haiti Needs New Narratives”: Literary and Critical Responses to Persistent ‘Disaster Zone’ Discourse
There is a Haitian phrase that describes the nation as being on tè glise, slippery ground. This condition is the effect of Haiti’s many historical and contemporary catastrophes, both natural and (inter)national. Haiti has been beset by not only hurricanes and earthquakes, but also economic struggles after the revolution that freed the slaves and rocked the West, which persist under the further influence of U.S. imperialism and occupation and the devastating Duvalier dictatorships.
However, literary authors and scholars are working to challenge narratives of Haiti that serve to freeze the Caribbean nation in an ahistorical dystopia of sorts, a disaster zone from which it can’t seem to recover. For instance, Martin Munro’s work Tropical Apocalypse examines apocalypse discourse by historicizing the events that have shaped the current state of the nation, and Gina A. Ulysse’s Why Haiti Needs New Narratives presents a collection of pieces that examine the ways in which Haiti’s representations are rhetorically and culturally constituted from outside of its culture.
The Edwidge Danticat Society invites papers that address the discourse around Haiti as a “disaster zone” or a dystopia and seek to engage with this discourse through examinations of the ways in which literature and criticism propose alternative Haitian realities and imaginaries. We especially welcome papers addressing the work of Danticat and other authors of the Haitian dyaspora.
By May 20, 2016, please submit a brief biography, 300 word abstract (please include working title) and a/v needs to Maia L. Butler, University of Louisiana at Lafayette at maia.butler@edwidgedanticatsociety.org.
All presenters, chairs, and moderators must be members of Edwidge Danticat Society.

The good people at Fusion caught up with Edwidge Danticat at the Miami Book Fair to see what message she had for our next president of the United States. She had some important things to say about immigration reform, and you can hear them by watching Danticat’s #DearNextPresident video.