Colloque “Claude McKay: Passages and Crossings”
30 November – 2 December 2023
Invited speaker: Ernest Mitchell (Yale University)
On the occasion of the centenary of Claude McKay’s arrival in France, the Banjo Society (Aix-Marseille Université) will hold their second international and interdisciplinary symposium devoted to the Jamaican-born poet, novelist, journalist, and activist whose novels Banjo (1929) and Romance in Marseille (2020) conjures up a view of the diasporic communities in the thriving colonial port city. The main objective of the symposium is to bring recent scholarly work on McKay to bear on a new understanding and reconceptualization of the history and circulations of the black diasporas following the abolition of slavery in the French Empire in 1848, as well as of the intellectual and biographical trajectories linked to them.
This three-day in-person symposium will be held in Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles from November 30 – December 2 2023.
It will bring together international researchers, students, publishers, and translation practitioners who will engage in debate and talks on the production, translation, circulation, and dissemination of Claude McKay’s work in and beyond Marseilles.
The conference schedule will begin Thursday 31 November at 2:00 PM on the Schuman Campus in Aix-en-Provence. An opening ceremony led by conference organizers is set for 6:30 p.m. at the Maison de la Recherche. The conference ends Saturday 2 December at 1:00 p.m. at the auditorium of the Conservatoire Pierre Barbizet in Marseilles. A live concert inspired by McKay’s life and work is scheduled Saturday at 5:00 PM at the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MUCEM).
Sponsors of the event are Faculty of Arts, Letters, Languages and Human Sciences; Fondation pour la Mémoire de l’Esclavage; Centre Interdisciplinaire d’Etude des Littératures d’Aix-Marseille UR 4235; Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches du Monde Anglophone UR 853-Aix-Marseille Université; Centre de Recherches Anglophones EA 370-Université Paris Nanterre; Corpus EA 4295-Université Picardie Jules-Verne; EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3; REMELICE- Université d’Orléans.
With are grateful for the support of the Conservatoire Pierre Barbizet; the Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Marseille; Esthétique(s) Jazz 2023
Other partners are Association pour l’Etude des Littératures Africaines (APELA); Association pour la promotion de la traduction littéraire (ATLAS), Arles; Collectif Claude McKay; McKay 100 ans après; Éditions Héliotropismes; Esthétique(s) Jazz 2023 ; Société d’Etudes Modernistes (SEM).
The conference is open to the public. Registration is free.
To view a full conference schedule and list of participants, see PDF
More information is available on our website: www.claudemckay.hypotheses.org