5. & 6. June 2018
Iwalewahaus
Wölfelstr. 2


Prof. Dr. Georg Hein (University of Essen/Germany)  

Dr. Bernd Florath (FU Berlin/Germany)
Prof. Dr. Raimi Gbadamosi (University of Pretoria/South Africa)
Prof. Dr. Onookome Okome(University of Alberta/Canada)
Dr. Esther Posner(University of Bayreuth/Germany)


Convenors: Prof. Dr. Susan Arndt (BIGSAS), Shirin Assa (BIGSAS), Xin Li (UBT), Samira Paraschiv (UBT), Dilan Zoe Smida (UBT), James Wachira (BIGSAS), Mingqing Yuan (BIGSAS)


Waves matter. They matter as matter, meaning and respective narrations and metaphors. Waves are the gist of everything both on planet earth and its home – the space*times in universe. Likewise, “wave” has also grown into an omnipotent tool for human understanding, interpreting, communicating, and changing of both matter and meaning all across this globe and beyond. Waves are key to natural sciences, yet humanities, analogously, keep thinking in waves while mobilizing metaphors that feature “wave” to narrate societal and cultural process and periodic actions, as for example when speaking of “waves of feminism”. Thus, waves constitute what Stefan Helmreich, a science anthropologist, aptly considers as “[…] phenomenological-technical-mathematical-political-legal objects.” (2014: 273) Helmreich’s position renders waves borderless; that no discipline claims total purchase of waves, hence leading us to an interdisciplinary playground. Thus tuned, this workshop aims to pursue an interdisciplinary dialogue on waves. 

The first day of the workshop is devoted to a short introduction to the basics of astrophysics by Prof. Georg Hein, theoretical mathematician at the University of Essen. In his keynote lecture, Hein will cover questions such as: What do we know about the universe, and why do we (not) know what we (do not) know? On what basis do maps and other visualizations of the cosmos work? What do they narrate; and what does remain silent? What can be perceived (seen, heard) and thus, be considered in equations and represented in models – and what not? In what sense is everything connected: the big and the small, via the Big Bang and omnipresent physical and chemical processes? And how do waves come in here? How will new knowledge about gravitational waves change our understanding of the universe, spacetime, Big Bang, and our notions about the future of the planet? How relevant are the findings about waves all the way from Galilei, Newton, Einstein and Planck and what are Stephen Hawkings’s contemporary theories about the cosmos and warnings about waves which were endangering organic life on this planet all about? 

Prof. Hein’s lecture will be revisited by an interdisciplinary panel discussion as well as two Afrofuturist installations by Ingrid LaFleur (USA) and Mduduzi Khumalo (South Africa), seeking to explore questions such as: (Why) Does the human mind tend to stumble while imagining the oneness of temporalities and spatialities as well as invisible waves and the unity, nonlinearity and causality of spacetimes? How do imaginations and narrations contribute to overcoming such voids? And how “Other” and “Outer” is the spacetime beyond planet earth after all?

Day two is devoted to the use of “wave” as a metaphor in disciplines such as History, Economics, Geology, Geography, Translation Science, and (African) Literary Studies. While mapping the employment of “wave” as matter, meaning, narration and metaphor in various fields, this workshop intends to identify similarities and differences in the perceptions and interpretations of “wave” in different disciplines. 

The workshop’s interdisciplinarity is in line with the interdisciplinary scope of BIGSAS in general and its epistemic endeavor to bring African Literary and Cultural Studies into dialogue with (the conceptualizations of waves in) Biology, Engineering, Geosciences, History, and Mathematics in particular. 

Let’s wave!

Program

Tuesday, June 5th, 2018

16:00 Welcome and Introduction

Prof. Dr. Susan Arndt (BIGSAS) & Mingqing Yuan (BIGSAS)


16:15 Keynote Lecture

Prof. Dr. Georg Hein (Essen University) "Our Universe -modelled on Likelihood, Waves and Chaos"
Chair: Samira Parschiv (UBT) 
Translated simultaneously into English by Dilan Zoe Smida


18:00 Panel Discussion “How Outer and Other is the Universe?”

Prof. Dr. Georg Hein (Essen University), Raimi Gbadamosi (South Africa/ UK), 
Dr. Bernd Florath (FU Berlin/Germany), Dilan Zoe Smida (UBT) & Xin Li (IPP, UBT)
Chair:Prof. Dr. Susan Arndt (BIGSAS) & James Wachira (BIGSAS)
Translated simultaneously into English by Dilan Zoe Smida


20:00 Installation “Waves`n Space”
Iwalewahaus, Foyer & Bar

Ingrid LaFleur (USA) “Portal Masks Meditation, In Paradisum, 2015”
Dilan Zoe Smida & Aras Hesso (Curdistan) “Strings ‘n Waves”
Chair:Dilan Zoe Smida (UBT) & Xin LI (UBT))


20:00 ALT+DIN Cathedrom


21:00 Dinner Party with DJ dilop


Wednesday June 6th, 2018

11:00 - 14:30 Lectures
Foyer & Oval Office, Iwalewahaus

Dr. Esther Posner (UBT) “From the Atomic to the Cosmic: The Importance of Waves in Earth  and Planetary Sciences”

Prof. Dr. Raimi Gbadamosi (South Africa/UK) “An Adventure into The Unknown

Matthias Bräunig (Bayreuth) “Wellen, das Elixier allen Lebens”

Dr. Bernd Florath (FU Berlin/ Germany) “The Concept of Time as a Human Translation of        Nature`s Rhythm” 

Prof. Dr. Onookome Okome (University of Alberta/ Humboldt-Fellow) “Waves, Water, and the figura of Mammiwata in Nollywood” 

Chair:James Wachira (BIGSAS) & Mingqing Yuan (BIGSAS)


15:15- 16:30 Panel Presentations I: Waves and Fiction
Oval Office, Iwalewahaus
Ifeloluwa Aboluwade (IPP, UBT)“Spatializing Translation: Thresholds of Transformations in African Literatures” 

Xin Li (IPP)“Waves and the Inquiries into Silence” 

Dilan Zoe Smida (UBT)“Brain Waves and Literary Plasticity”

Chair: Samira Paraschiv (UBT)


17:00-18:30 Panel Presentations II: Waves and African Literatures

Samira Paraschiv (MA, UBT)“Translating Waves in African Fiction”

James Wachira (BIGSAS)“Figuring Waves in Wanuri Kahiu’s Pumzi”

Mingqing Yuan (BIGSAS)“Waves of Texts: Africa, China and World Literature
in the Postcolonial Era” 

Chair: Xin Li (IPP)

20:00ALT+DIN
19:00- 20:00 Concluding Discussion: BIGSAS Talk

Chair: Susan Arndt & Mingqing Yuan (BIGSAS)
Participants


1. Ifelouwa Aboluwade is a PhD candidate at the University of Bayreuth. Her research interests include postcolonial literature, translation theory, and West African Theatre Studies. 


2. Prof. Dr. Susan Arndt is Professor of Anglophone literatures at the University of Bayreuth. She was a Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College (Oxford), Humboldt University Berlin, the Center for Literary Studies in Berlin, and the University of Frankfurt/Main. Her research expertise in postcoloniality, feminism and posthumanism are mobilized in the disciplinary frame of Transcultural Literary Studies and with emphasis on narratives on migration, futurity, critical whiteness, and resistance.


3. Shirin Assa has been engaged with literary study of diasporic identities/ID*scapes in the field of Future and Postcolonial Studies and is intrigued by non-exclusive practices of communities, modes of identification, and subject formation. Currently a PhD candidate at BIGSAS, she pursues a comparative study on future-narratives of Europe at its intersection with migrants' futures. 


4. Matthias Bräunig works as an engineer in a Bayreuth based company.


5. Dr. Bernd Florath works as a historian at the Behörde des Bundesbeauftragten für Stasi-Unterlagen. He has been a member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin as well as a research assistant at KAI e.V., HU Berlin and at the Memorial of German Resistance. Dr. Florath also holds a lectureship in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at FU Berlin.


6. Raimi Gbadamosi is an artist, writer and curator. He received his Doctorate (2001) in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He is a member of the 'Black Body' group, Goldsmiths College, London. Recent artist books include: incredulous; ordinary people; extraordinary people; contents; Drink Horizontal; Drink Vertical; The Dreamers' Perambulator; and four word.


7. Prof. Dr. Georg Hein is Professor of Mathematics and Algebraic Geometry at the University of Essen. He studied Mathematics at Humboldt-University, Berlin. After completing his doctorate degree, Prof. Hein effectuated a research fellowship at Boston University. From 2002 to 2006 he was a research assistant at FU Berlin, where he completed his habilitation titled “Vectors on algebraic varieties”. His work revolves around Algebraic geometry, particularly on generalized theta divisors. 


8. Mduduzi Khumalo is performer and activist of global learning, co-founder of the integration theater “Afrikabaret - Backpackers Company”. Since 2016 he has visualized performative, in*visible art that shows the confrontation with boundaries in various projects as a learning tool. The Wall - Awareness With Attitude is a multiplicatory attempt to show inclusion through images and sounds of the environment to understand the paternalistic power and behavior on the topic of intersectionality.


9. Xin Li is a PhD candidate at the University of Bayreuth, funded by China Scholarship Council. Currently she is doing research on “Saying the unsayable---Silence, Language, Violence and Ethical Intervention of History in selected North American Narratives”.


10. Ingrid LaFleur is an artist, activist, and Afrofuturist. Her mission is to ensure equal distribution of futures, exploring the frontiers of social justice through new technologies, economies and modes of government. As a recent Detroit Mayoral candidate and founder and director of AFROTOPIA, LaFleur implements Afrofuturist strategies to empower Black bodies and oppressed communities through frameworks such as blockchain, cryptocurrency, and universal basic income.


11. Anouar Messada completed his MA studies at the University of Bayreuth as well as University of Mannheim. He is also a professional translator and his research interests include translation theory, fashion and literature, and North American literature. 


12. Prof. Dr. Onookome Okome studied at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and is Professor of Anglophone African Literature and Cinema at the University of Alberta, Canada. He has done three edited books on Nigerian literature. Global Nollywood: An African Video Film Industry (Indiana University Press, 2013), and Popular Culture in Africa: The Episteme of Everyday Life (Routledge, New York, 2014) are some his latest books. His most recent essay on Nollywood is "Islam et Cinema en Afrique de l'ouest"(Tresor de Islam en Afrique. Paris: Silvania Editoriale, 2017). He was a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar and is a Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at UBT.    


13. Samira Paraschiv is a research assistant at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies and a permanent team member of the BIGSAS-Festival of African and African-diasporic literatures. She is a member of the research group on Shakespeare’s African and Asian Sources. Her research interests are ideology and translation, language and migration, postcolonial literatures.


14. Dr. Esther Posner is a native of Michigan (USA) and earned her PhD in Experimental Geosciences at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut (BGI) of the Universität Bayreuth in 2017. She is presently employed at BGI as a laboratory manager and post-doctoral researcher. In addition to her passion for science, Dr. Posner is also a musician and performance poet. 


15. Dilan Zoe Smida received her BA in English and Intercultural German Studies in 2016 and is currently enrolled in the Literature and Media Master at the University of Bayreuth. Her research interests include postcolonial Shakespeare, migration, Trans/nationalism and Theatre Studies. 


16. James Wachira is a PhD student at BIGSAS and an associate researcher in Transcultural English studies, working on a PhD project on poetry about Non*human, poetics and knowledge production.


17. Mingqing Yuan is a PhD candidate at University of Bayreuth. She is working on the topic “African and African diasporic Conceptualization of China”, mainly from the perspectives of space-time, identity, and migration. She is also a member of the research group on Shakespeare’s African and Asian Sources. 

ABSTRACTS


1. Ifelouwa Aboluwade Spatialization Translation: Thresholds of Transformation 

In Translation Studies, both the notion of translation/interpretation and the ideological positioning of the translator are frequently (re)conceptualized through spatial metaphors. This paper explores the interconnection between waves, thresholds and the metaphorization of translation through the theoretical and philosophical frameworks of Walter Benjamin and Rainer Guldin with a view to understanding how they articulate an alternative understanding of translation that foregrounds fluidity, ambivalence, transformation and unpredictability.



2. Dr. Bernd Florath The Concept of Time as a Human Translation of Nature’s Rhythm 

The concept of time is one of the basic discoveries of humans, in fact one of the most significant ones. It is not, however, an entirely new notion for it emerges from those natural rhythms of/in nature; the concept of time as the recurrent rhythm of planting and growing, as such. That being said, it does not merely conceptualize the rhythm of production, but coordinates our understanding of the distant natural phenomena like Sun and Moon. Calendars were intended to shape or model time, thus implementing it as a human concept, creating both past and future as places that have been or will be inhabited by humans (or not). 



3. Prof. Dr. Raimi Gbadamosi An Adventure into The Unknown

Little Green Men from the Red Planet, ‘Bugs’ from Distant Galaxies, Spores from Somewhere, Things without Names or Origins, and Beings with No Forms. The ‘alien’ of science fiction is important for the collective imagination, it allows room for the impossible to exist, the ‘opposite’ of the self that should be feared before understood, and to be met with strategies of destruction. 



4. Xin Li Waves & The Inquiries into Silence

It was a hundred years ago that Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, and it took a century of inquiries into the silence before scientists were able to prove their existence by capturing their sounds (though only a fraction of what is out there in the universe) – sounds that are otherwise silence to the human ear – by amplifying and tuning them to the vibration frequency of human hearing. This is one example of how the Other (the universe) speaks to us – it speaks to us in form of a silent call for a transcendence of our current apparatuses of understanding. The perceived silence of the Other is not nothingness, nor is it an absence of meaning; it is instead a waiting; a calling for imagination, fictionalization and the humble knowledge of one’s own limit of knowing. This paper, drawing upon the insights of Merleau Ponty, Blanchot, Derrida and Spivak, looks into the ontologization of silence in marginalized literatures in North America, its meaning and function in the narratives’ struggle to the cultural and historical Other. 



5. Prof. Dr. Onookome Okome Waves, Water and The Figure of the Mammiwata in Nollywood

For over a hundred years, local mythologies of the water goddess have shaped the spiritual life of communities along the tributaries of Nigeria’s River, Niger. Different variations of the worship of this goddess exist in these communities. Compared to other forms of local worship systems, the worship of mammiwata is a fairly recent religious invention that dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. A specific variation is the dance-worship, igbe, which is popular among the Urhobo, Itsekiri, Ijaw, Edo and the Oguta societies of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Indeed, the famous Nigerian novel, Efuru, by Flora Nwapa is framed around the influence of this deity on the main character, Efuru, whose life is controlled by this water spirit. Mostly patronized by women, the worship of the figure of the mammiwata has been read by African feminist scholars as an example of women-centered spiritual activities that empower women in the typically male-dominated societies of these riverine communities. The rise of the Nollywood film reinvents the way we read and understand this water goddess as it focuses instead on denouncing this local form of worship as the practice of the devil. My presentation reads the representations of the worship of this goddess in Nollywood, with a special reference to the Nollywood genre, the “hallelujah video film (Okome 2004).” In this presentation, I will investigate why the mammiwata myth became a rallying point of worship among many, especially women, who live in the riverine part of Nigeria. My reading of the figure of the mammiwata will ask the question: why is this water mermaid often, if not always, structured in narrative opposition to the Pentecostal idea of the Christian God? And how do waves matter with respect to (this) spirituality?



6. Samira Paraschiv Translating Waves in African Fiction

This presentation will look at what happens if we think that translation is a wave that carries forward creative and representational energy from the source text to the translated one. Translations are never final; in fact, no work exists as an original until someone has translated it in a way or another. Using Ubaldo Stecconi`s (1997) theory on translation as a wave, Charles Sanders Pierce`s (1894) theory of signs, and an analogy between the actual waves of translation and translations in general, I will look at the semiotic nature of translation as a chain of interrelated signs that forms sets of relations among the “original”, the interpretant, the translator`s interpretant, and the reader. In doing so, I will focus on selected African novels and plays.



7. Dr. Esther Posner From the Atomic to the Cosmic: The Importance of Waves in Earth and Planetary Sciences

Light and sound waves can be used to investigate atomic- to galactic-scale features of planetary and space science systems. From the spacing of atoms to the interior structure of planets to the geometries of the farthest regions of space, analytical and observational techniques involving wave properties are instrumental to our understanding of the natural world. In this short talk, I will introduce the fundamentals of electromagnetism, electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and seismic methods, and discuss the present state of knowledge regarding the physics and chemistry of the Earth’s interior.



8. Dilan Zoe Smida Brain Waves and Literary Plasticity

The human brain has an ever-changing electrical and neurochemical environment. Its structure and connectivity are constantly in flux. Due to this neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, cognitive functions are affected by daily and long-term habits of behavior and thought processes. These processes are made up by the signals synapses firing in synchrony which are called brain waves due to their cyclic and wave-like nature. The different frequencies allow different states of consciousness that range from analytical to imaginative activities. Not trying to argue in a neuroaesthetic fashion, this paper will yet be of importance to translate the concept of plasticity into literary theory. Here, one can argue, similar to a rhizomatic intertextuality, for an interconnectivity and rewiring of fiction. Which texts do speak to each other and allow new interpretations when being de/synchronised? How can this flexibility and transformability become part of analyzing a literary text alongside existing and newly developing ideas? What must be done as to re/activate less agile structures in the text? 



9. James Wachira Figuring Waves in Wanuri Kahiu’s Pumzi (2009)

Pumzi (2009) w(e)aves futures into narration, mobilizing as its narrative energies the blending of aspects from science fiction, orality and Wangari Maathai’s activism. Besides the properties pronouncing the film in(to) Afrofuturism, they also engineer a curiosity to make out waves as a metaphor. Its oscillation from one aspect to another informs the treatment of waves in Pumzi as both a method and a heuristic tool for inquiring into futures. The aim is to explore how human and Non*human agencies entangle in producing futures. The analysis argues that the film offers a model for anticipating futures. The framing of the argument trans*texts Susan Arndt’s conception of FutureS and John Law’s modes of knowing to speak to the Afrofuturist concerns of the Pumzi film.



10. Mingqing Yuan Waves of Texts: Africa, China and World Literature

This presentation aims to review the changing trends from the 1950’s to 1980’s in the field of literature from writing forms, styles, themes to dictions and characterizations in the works from Africa and China to see how texts had been waving and waved with each other as well as with the postcolonial struggle, how the ripples and repercussions of those texts effect across space and time and how these movements and interactions among texts provide new perspectives in understanding world literature and China-Africa relations.


Contact

Ihre Nachricht an uns:

Impressum
Angaben gemäß § 5 TMG
BIGSAS Festival afrikanischer und afrikanisch-diasporischer Literaturen
Universität Bayreuth
Universitätsstr. 30
95440 Bayreuth
Vertreten durch
Prof. Dr. Susan Arndt
Kontakt
Telefon: +49 921 553551 
E-Mail: susan.arndt@uni-bayreuth.de
Internet: http://www.bigsas-literaturfestival.de/
 
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