Fagunwa Study Group (FSG)
International Conference
7-10 AUGUST 2019
Venue:
International Culture and Events Centre (The Dome)
Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria
Wọlé Ṣóyínká:
Wọlé Ṣóyínká, D. O. Fágúnwà, and the Yorùbá Artistic
Heritage
The
Fágúnwà Study Group (FSG) hereby announces the theme of its 2019 conference: Wọlé
Ṣóyínká: Wọlé Ṣóyínká, D. O. Fágúnwà, and the Yorùbá Artistic
Heritage. The Group seeks paper and panel proposals that creatively examine
both broad and specific intersections and elements of the theme. The broad
spectrum of the work of Wọlé Ṣóyínká, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in
Literature, is the primary focus of this edition of the conference, in
celebration of his eighty-fifth birthday.
Ṣóyínká
and Fágúnwà are two foremost figures in twentieth-century Nigerian and African
literary history. The two writers work in different primary languages, but
prominent features of their imaginations, sourced deep in the Yorùbá artistic
heritage and then elsewhere, cross one another in many profoundly stimulating
ways. Primary language or medium notwithstanding, both foregrounded for
philosophical exploration what Fágúnwà offered as the imperatives of
forward-tilting progress (ìlọsíwájú) and upward escalation (ìdàgbàsókè)
as chief driving forces of life and the artistic-narrative contemplation of
same. The most significant questors in Fágúnwà’s adventures are often charged
with the task of obtaining from their journeys new templates for social living,
new ways of being human, and ever novel ways of attaining the common good and
coming to ever better approximations to it.
Ṣóyínká
remains the preeminent scholar, translator, and popularizer of Fágúnwà’s works.
This is not just in terms of Ṣóyínká’s pioneer status in the enterprise but
also in how influential his interpretations of Fágúnwà have been on subsequent
efforts. Together and in the context of the expansive cultural and literary
traditions they draw from, their work allows us to critically juxtapose and
interactively explore key elements of modern African sensibilities and
consciousness: orality and literacy, community and the individual, tradition
and innovation, secularity and religion, freedom and unfreedom, ethics and
aesthetics, the modern nation-state and its fragments, culture and politics,
and antiquity and modernity.
Speakers
are invited to present original research on any aspect of the work of Wole
Soyinka, and/or in conjunction with that of Fagunwa and other writers.
Suggested paper and panel templates include but are not limited to: Yorùbá
Culture and Philosophy as Common Backcloth | Soyinka and Nigerian & African
Literature and the Arts | Wole Soyinka and D. O. Fagunwa: Intersections |
Soyinka, Fagunwa, and Nigerian & African Literature and the Arts | Soyinka
and the State in Africa: Writers in/and Politics | Monotheism, Polytheism, and
Modernity | The Play of Generations: Wasted & Fecund | Translation:
Culture, Language, Politics | The Plays of Generations: Wasted & Fecund | Modernism
and the Emergence of African Literature | Development (Idàgbàsókè), Progress
(Ilọ́síwájú), and Ọ̀làjú (Modernization) | Novelty and the Open Future: Time,
Timing, Timeliness, Belatedness | Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Yorùbá
and Nigerian Cultures | Culture-Heroism and Militarism | The Oral, the Written
and the Performed | Cultivating Metalanguage and Discourses: Literature,
Performance, Philosophy, Sociology, Science, Engineering | Soyinka, Fagunwa,
and Nollywood | Institutions: Culture, Religion, Politics, and the State |
Soyinka: The “Interventions” Series | Fagunwa, Soyinka, and Yoruba Music and
Visual Arts.
Deadlines and Instructions
Paper
and panel abstracts are due on May 24, 2019. They should be no longer
than 250 words. Panel abstracts should, in addition, include the full names and
addresses of all panelists, and the titles and up to 120-word abstracts of each
of their papers.
Those
whose papers are accepted will be notified by June 20, 2019 or before.
Conference
registration rates are: NGN25,000 (Local Participants); USD150 (Foreign
Participants); NGN10,000 (Graduate Students).
Tejumola Olaniyan, Convener, FSG 2019 Conference
Fagunwa Study Group (FSG)
https://fagunwastudygroup.org/activities/international-conference-2019/
