Franklin Hosts "Caribbean Unbound III"

03/07/2007

Lugano March 29-31,2007

Franklin College Switzerland will be hosting the third biennial Lugano Conference of Caribbean Literature and Culture, “The Caribbean Unbound III,” from March 29 to March 31. The conference will be held on the Sorengo (Lugano) campus of the College. The three-day conference will officially kick off with Maryse Condé’s keynote address, “Itinerary of a Caribbean Writer,” at 18:00 on Thursday evening, March 29. That will be followed by a reception in her honor and a film after the reception. The following two days will offer a wide selection of inter-disciplinary topics exploring the history, politics, art, literature, religion, film, music and plantation culture of the Caribbean. Panels will be primarily held in English, but with some in French.

This year’s keynote speaker will be the highly acclaimed Guadeloupean novelist, Maryse Condé. Born in Pointe-à-Pitre in 1937, Condé was educated in Paris before moving to Africa where she lived for over a decade. Her first novel, Heremakhonon, published in French 1976, was set in Africa. The first volume of Segu, published in 1984, charted the decline of the Bambara in early 19th century Mali when they were confronted with the arrival of Islam. It was a best seller in France. Her novel, I, Tituba, based on the Salem Witch Trials and using elements from The Scarlet Letter, was published in 1992. Her most recent novel about Africa, entitled Histoire de la femme cannibale, is set in Capetown. Condé has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, UCLA and the Sorbonne. In 2004, she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emeritus of French. At present, she serves as president of “Le Comité pour la Mémoire de l’Esclavage,” which is based in Paris.

The Franklin College Conference on Caribbean Literature and Culture was first organized some four years ago by Dr. Robert H. McCormick, Jr, Professor of Literature at Franklin. At previous conferences keynote speakers were Professors Antonio Benítez-Rojo and J. Michael Dash. Multi-cultural in conception, the conference has grown to global dimensions. This year, literary and cultural scholars from prestigious academic institutions as near as Geneva and as far away as Canada, California and Taiwan will be participating.

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