Chinua Achebe: No Longer At Ease
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Conference, Reading For No Longer at Ease At 50
</I>[SIZE=+1]This[/SIZE] year, Chinua Achebe's classic second novel, No Longer at Ease, will celebrate its 50th anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, Wellesley College is planning a three-day anniversary conference in March.
The main attraction of the conference is Professor Achebe's 2010 Wilson Lecture - one of the college's most important academic events - a lecture series that has attracted such luminaries to campus as Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the recent past.
The lecture is planned to trigger a lively discussion of the broader issues of independence and postcolonial realities, in Africa and beyond, that are at the heart of Achebe's fiction.
Scholars, writers, lecturers, from local colleges and universities in Boston as well as from Brown university, Achebe's new academic base, will be invited, as will be a select group of international intellectuals. Readings by contemporary Nigerian writers have also been planned for the anniversary celebration.
A major highlight of the three day gathering will be a scholarly symposium, No Longer at Ease 1960-2010: Literature, Politics, and the Challenges of Africa at the Crossroads, following Achebe's lecture.
Already, several scholars of African literature, Africana Studies, and postcolonial studies in the Boston-Cambridge, and New England area are involved in the planning and have expressed interest in participating in such a retrospective.
According to one of the conference organizers, Professor Margaret Cezair-Thompson, "the title alone 'No Longer at Ease' seems to be especially resonant today. Having experienced about half a century now of independence and postcolonial realities, for many in the former colonies, African Diaspora and/or scholars of African literature and culture, the conference is being set aside as a time to look at the past, present, and future of African political and literary expression, with the novel as a central text in this process."
No longer at Ease is "the story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his African roots and made him part of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant but later finds himself enmeshed in the pervasive corrupt practices that have permeated every aspct of society. More than fifty years after it was first written, this novel remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African societies."
Achebe's visit to Wellesley will include meetings with Wellesley and other area faculty and students.
Wellesley College is considered America's most elite college of higher education devoted to the education of young women. Located in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the college was opened in 1875, founded by Henry Fowle Durant and his wife Pauline Fowle Durant. Famous alumni include Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; writer Emily Dickinson; TV journalist Diane Sawyer; legendary Oscar winning actress, Katherine Hepburn, and former Secretary of State of Madeleine K. Albright.
Culled from the internet
Guardian Newspapers
</I>[SIZE=+1]This[/SIZE] year, Chinua Achebe's classic second novel, No Longer at Ease, will celebrate its 50th anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, Wellesley College is planning a three-day anniversary conference in March.
The main attraction of the conference is Professor Achebe's 2010 Wilson Lecture - one of the college's most important academic events - a lecture series that has attracted such luminaries to campus as Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the recent past.
The lecture is planned to trigger a lively discussion of the broader issues of independence and postcolonial realities, in Africa and beyond, that are at the heart of Achebe's fiction.
Scholars, writers, lecturers, from local colleges and universities in Boston as well as from Brown university, Achebe's new academic base, will be invited, as will be a select group of international intellectuals. Readings by contemporary Nigerian writers have also been planned for the anniversary celebration.
A major highlight of the three day gathering will be a scholarly symposium, No Longer at Ease 1960-2010: Literature, Politics, and the Challenges of Africa at the Crossroads, following Achebe's lecture.
Already, several scholars of African literature, Africana Studies, and postcolonial studies in the Boston-Cambridge, and New England area are involved in the planning and have expressed interest in participating in such a retrospective.
According to one of the conference organizers, Professor Margaret Cezair-Thompson, "the title alone 'No Longer at Ease' seems to be especially resonant today. Having experienced about half a century now of independence and postcolonial realities, for many in the former colonies, African Diaspora and/or scholars of African literature and culture, the conference is being set aside as a time to look at the past, present, and future of African political and literary expression, with the novel as a central text in this process."
No longer at Ease is "the story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his African roots and made him part of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant but later finds himself enmeshed in the pervasive corrupt practices that have permeated every aspct of society. More than fifty years after it was first written, this novel remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African societies."
Achebe's visit to Wellesley will include meetings with Wellesley and other area faculty and students.
Wellesley College is considered America's most elite college of higher education devoted to the education of young women. Located in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the college was opened in 1875, founded by Henry Fowle Durant and his wife Pauline Fowle Durant. Famous alumni include Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; writer Emily Dickinson; TV journalist Diane Sawyer; legendary Oscar winning actress, Katherine Hepburn, and former Secretary of State of Madeleine K. Albright.
Culled from the internet
Guardian Newspapers