Invitation to a talk by Evelyn Camille

Evelyn Camille (Elder, Secwepemc Nation, BC, Canada)

"Aboriginal Title and Land-Rights facing Industrial Exploitation of Natural Resources The Case of British Columbia/Canada

Thursday, 6 April 2017, 14:00-16:00
GW2 B3009

Lecture within the INPUTS lecture series "Changing ecologies: language, culture and the environment" organised by Eeva Sippola and Joanna Chojnicka

Abstract:
Traditional land rights have been questioned by the European colonizers as soon as the later started claiming the land for themselves. Successively treaties have been signed between the First Nations and the Newcomers. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 declared the Indigenous Nations as sovereign partners within this process. Yet, oral traditions of these treaties transmit a different understanding of these treaties than their written versions. Within the manifold local treaty-situations British Columbia holds a particular position, because many First Nations in this area never surrendered their traditional homelands nor signed general treaties with the Canadian government. They immediately started political and legal actions in order to defend their traditional rights. The Secwepemc Nation, represented here by Elder Evelyn Camille, is one of these Nations.

This presentation will deal with traditional Secwepemc land use, rights and title, and their current struggle to protect their natural resources against destruction by mindless industrial exploitation.

ALL WELCOME!

New publication by Tendai Mangena

The new book African Women Under Fire: Literary Discourses in War and Conflict, edited by Pauline Ada Uwakweh and published with Lexington Books in 2017, includes Tendai Mangena’s (Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies team) Chapter: 2. “Reading the War Theme in Selected Black Zimbabwean Women Texts”.

Abstract:
African writers and literary critics must account for the changing political terrain and how these contribute to creating new sources of conflicts and aggression toward women. This book brings insight and scholarly breadth to the growing research on women, war, and conflict in Africa. The aftermath of wars and conflicts initiates new forms of violence and related gender challenges. The contributors establish compelling evidence for the significance of gender in the analyses of contemporary warfare and conflict. Articulating war's consequences for women and children remains a major challenge for critics, policy makers, and human rights organizations. There is a need for deeper understanding of the new sources of violence and male aggression on women, the gendered challenges of reintegration in the aftermath, and the future consequences of gendered violence for the African continent. This book will be useful to scholars, researchers, instructors, students of literature in the humanities, women's studies, liberal studies, African studies, etc. at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It also offers interdisciplinary utility for readers interested in literary representations of women's experience in war and conflict.

Reviews:

Touching on the war experiences of African women, including combat, captivity, and rape, the nine essays in African Women Under Fire: Literary Discourses in War and Conflict, edited by Pauline Ada Uwakweh, engage female agency, resiliency, trauma, violence, and the roles of memory and testimony. Bringing together a wide variety of theories and approaches, the contributors re-examine African war literature from a gendered, postcolonial frame that encompasses trauma studies, psychoanalysis, immigration studies, and the problems of representation.
— Joya Uraizee, Saint Louis University

For too long in the history of fiction writing in Africa, the tendency has been to portray women as literary shadows of male creative imagination. In African Women Under Fire: Literary Discourses in War and Conflict, one senses in the critical essays on women’s war literature, a significant and necessary step towards disrupting the masculinization of the African critical enterprise in the literary domain. Never again will African women’s creative voices be mere appendages in anthologies composed by men.
— Maurice Taonezvi Vambe, University of South Africa

More information about the book under the following link: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498529181/African-Women-Under-Fire-Literary-Discourses-in-War-and-Conflict#

Learn Tok Pisin!

Tok Pisin Intensive Courses I and II 
10-14 and 17-21 July, 2017
Prof. Dr. Craig Alan Volker (Visiting Professor, University of Bremen)

Tok Pisin, also known as New Guinea Pidgin English, is a lingua franca of Papua New Guinea.

Competence in Tok Pisin is indispensable for fieldwork, engagement in development projects, or business in Melanesia. A direct engagement with Tok Pisin is also of interest to linguists interested in the structure of pidgin and creole languages and in the results of intensive language contact.

In these intensive courses, students will attain up to A2 and B1 level proficiency. The lessons will be given in Tok Pisin, English, and/or German.

 For more information, see the Uni Bremen Linguistics course list for Summer Semester 2017 at www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/linguistik/, or contact Dr. Marivic Lesho at lesho@uni-bremen.de.

External participants are welcome!

Linguistic Colloquium on Mixed Languages: Call for Papers

Linguistic Colloquium on Mixed Languages

University of Bremen

September 28-29, 2017

Call for Papers

Mixed languages have fascinated scholars for decades (e.g. Bakker & Mous 1994, Auer 1999, Matras & Bakker 2003, Meakins 2013) because they present an intriguing type of language contact. They arise in bilingual settings, often as markers of identity or as secret languages, and they combine parts from different language families or branches, showing unique splits that often challenge theories of genetic classification and contact-induced change.

The aim of this colloquium is to examine the current state of the theoretical and empirical debate on mixed languages. We welcome contributions that deal with any aspect of mixed language varieties, for example:
- descriptive and documentation approaches to mixed languages
- theoretical discussions on mixed languages, their origin, and development
- mixed languages in comparison to creoles and pidgins
- different types of language mixing practices

Invited speakers:
Peter Bakker (Aarhus University)
Katja Hannß (University of Cologne)
Yaron Matras (University of Manchester)
Marten Mous (Leiden University)

Please submit your abstracts by May 5, 2017 by email to mazzoli@uni-bremen.de. Please provide the title of the paper, name(s) of the author(s), academic title, and affiliation in the abstract. The abstracts should not exceed 500 words. Notification of acceptance can be expected by June 5, 2017. Papers will be given in English, and they should not exceed 30 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion time.

The meeting is organized by the Postcolonial Language Studies research group as part of the Linguistic Colloquium series at the Institute for General and Applied Linguistics (IAAS), University of Bremen.

Important dates:
Submission deadline: May 5, 2017
Announcement of acceptance: June 5, 2017
Conference: September 28-29, 2017

Contact:
Maria Mazzoli mazzoli@uni-bremen.de
Eeva Sippola sippola@uni-bremen.de