A Practice of Diaspora: Translation, Diasporic Literacy, and Afrodiasporic Fluency, a conversation and readings with Saidiya Hartman and Maboula Soumahoro
Talk
Maison Française East Gallery, Buell Hall, Columbia University
515 West 116th Street
New York, US 10027
February 22, 2023 I 6:30pm – 7:30pm EST
Join the Maison Française at Columbia University for a conversation and readings based on the translation in French of Saidiya Hartman’s “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) by Maboula Soumahoro as “À Perte de mère, sur les routes atlantiques de l’esclavage” (forthcoming 2023, Éditions Brook, Montreuil, France). The conversation will be moderated by Kaiama L. Glover.
In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, she reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African American history—provided by publisher. Learn more about Lose Your Mother here!
Saidiya V. Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University.
Maboula Soumahoro, Mellon International Visiting Professor, African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, Columbia University.
Kaiama L. Glover, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies, Faculty Director of the Digital Humanities Center, Barnard College.
This event is co-sponsored by the Maison Française, French Department, Institut of African Studies, History Department, Anthropology Department, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Africana Studies Department at Barnard. Please click here to learn more about this event.
In partnership with
Columbia Maison Française
For more than a century, the Columbia Maison Française has been a leader in fostering intellectual and cultural exchange between the United States and France, Europe, and the French-speaking world. The rich program of events at the Maison Française generates debate, spotlights original scholarship, promotes exchange across disciplines at Columbia and beyond, and contributes to international and cross-cultural understanding in an increasingly global world.
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