Medgar Evers College Hosts Free Conference on Aimé Césaire

Brooklyn, New York -- - On Saturday, April 18, the English Department of Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York will host a one-day conference on the life and work of the famed Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire (1913-2008).

The conference, Poetry and the Body Politic: Reflections on Aimé Césaire and His Vision of Negritude for a Post-Racial Society, will begin at 9:00 am in the Third Floor Atrium of the Student Support Services ("S") Building at 1637 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. For travel directions, click here.

The event is free and open to the public. Academics, students, and aficionados of French and/or Négritude literature are strongly encouraged to come and hear a variety of perspectives on the life and work of this important political and literary figure.

Born in Martinique in 1913, and educated in Paris, Aimé Césaire returned to the French colony in 1939. Upon his return, he began a career teaching high school-among his students would be the famed author and philosopher Franz Fanon. He also began writing and publishing essays on black heritage and European colonialism, such as Discourse on Colonialism, and poetry and plays: his most well-known poem is Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (published in 1939). The literary journal that he co-founded, along with fellow poets Léopold Sédas Senghor and Léon Damas, in the 1930s, gave way to the literary and political movement known as Négritude, which espoused that those of African descent reject notions of colonial identity in favor of recognizing and honoring one's black heritage as a method of fighting racism.

In 1945, Césaire began a career in politics, having been elected as mayor of Fort-de-France, a position he held until 2001 (with a small hiatus from 1983 to 1984). When he passed away last April, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who was instrumental in having Martinique's airport renamed Martinique Aimé Césaire National Airport, ensured Césaire received a state funeral.

At this conference, presenters have been invited to speak on a wide-range of topics including Negritude and Surrealism; Negritude and Magical Realism; Symbolic and Practical Applications of the Trinity; Hegelian Dialectics; Negritude and Globalism; Colonial vs. Post-Racial Identity; Post-Colonialism and the Black Atlantic; Negritude and Double Consciousness; Negritude and Sexuality; Multicultural Imperatives vs. Modernist Imperatives; and Biographical Approaches to Césaire, according to the call-for-papers issued in January.

Poetry and the Body Politic follows last month's highly successful day-long symposium on the work of Octavia Butler (held by the College's Center for Black Literature), and February's reading and discussion with renowned Black Arts Movement playwrights Amiri Baraka and Ed Bullins (sponsored by the College's English Department).

For more information on this conference, please contact Gregory Pardlo, Assistant Professor of English, at 718-270-4948, or gpardlo@mec.cuny.edu.

Sources

The Associated Press, Aimé Césaire, Martinique Poet and Politician, Dies at 94, The New York Times

Carol Brennan, Aimé Césaire Biography - Selected Writings, Biography Resource Center

Brooke Ritz, Aimé Césaire, Emory University