The Second Biennial Conference of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Network University of Leicester, UK, 11-13 July, 2008
How has diaspora shaped contemporary (post-1970) women???s writing? How has women???s writing born out of, or about, diaspora reshaped ideas about home, nation, national and gender identity? What kind of journeys have women undertaken and how are they represented in their work? In what ways does diasporic writing by women unsettle dominant structures?
Topics might include:
Migration and migratory subjectivity, settlers and settlements, location and relocation, the politics of place, home and exile, centre and margin, nation and national identity, hybridity, creole, multiculturalism, human trafficking, asylum, diaspora and trauma, north and south, East and West, South Asian diaspora, African diaspora, Caribbean diaspora, Chinese diaspora, Irish diaspora, Scottish diaspora, Jewish diaspora, queering diaspora.
Authors might include:
Andrea Levy, Monica Ali, Amy Tan, Anita Desai, Jackie Kay, Gloria Anzaldua, Zadie Smith, Linda Grant, Leila Aboulela, Buchi Emecheta, Meera Syal, Bernadine Evaristo, Toni Morrison, Joan Riley, Yvonne Brewster, Maxine Hong Kingston, Rukhsana Ahmad, Anne Michaels, Grace Nichols, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Alice Walker, Winsome Pinnock, Joyce Carol Oates (Oates C. Joyce), Jamaica Kincaid, Kiran Desai, Imtiaz Dharker, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Patience Agbabi, Moniza Alvi, Bharati Mukherjee, Ahdaf Soueif, Shani Mootoo, Tess Gallagher, Octavia Butler, Ama Ata Aidoo, Rita Dove, Faiza Guene, Chimananda Ngozi Adichi, Allegra Goodman.
Speakers include the multi-prize-winning poet, novelist and playwright Jackie Kay and Orange Prize-winning novelist and renowned journalist Linda Grant, who will be reading from and talking about their work.
Essays from this conference will be considered for publication in a special issue of the journal Contemporary Women???s Writing (General Editors: Mary Eagleton and Susan Stanford Friedman; Oxford University Press).
