"Gathering Thoughts: The Anthology as a (Modernist) African Genre," a Lecture by Tsitsi Jaji

The spirit of "ubuntu," a worldview emphasizing interdependence as a core value, is regularly invoked as a pan-African humanist framework. While by no means applicable as a description of conditions of life across the continent, this principle offers a productive way to think about practices that build communities of thought through shared work including edited volumes, conferences, little magazines, book fairs and the like. We will consider anthologies as a genre that helps interpret Africa's literary history across an extended period, from the turn of the 20th century to the present. We ask what African perspectives—often in intimate dialog with the Black diaspora—have to contribute to the "new modernist studies" and its aspirations toward a more global scope.

Tsitsi Jaji holds the Helen S. Bevington chair in Modern Poetry as a member of the English and African/African American Studies departments at Duke University. She is the author ofAfrica in Stereo: Music, Modernism and Pan-African Solidarity, a study of African interpretations of African American music in Ghana, Senegal and South Africa. She is also the author of two poetry collections,Mother Tongues (Cave Canem/Northwestern Press Prize 2018); and Beating the Graves;as Carnaval, a chapbook included in the New Generation African Poets first box set. She is currently a Mellon New Directions fellow, pursuing training in musicology.

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