Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen and Dr. Noemi Alfieri on anti-colonial networks in African literature

Abstract

Abstract: Cluster fellow Dr. Noemi Alfieri talks with her host and Junior Research Group Leader Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen about her latest research project "Mapping anti-colonial networks through literature. Transnational connections of African thinkers in the reconfiguration of space and thought (1950s - 70s)"

People & roles

Guest(s): Mark-Thiesen, Cassandra; Alfieri, Noemi

Origins & context

Title: Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen and Dr. Noemi Alfieri on anti-colonial networks in African literature
Language: English
Podcast series: Cluster Conversations
Date: August 25, 2023

Rights & access

Extent: 22 minutes, 21 seconds

Identifiers & sources

has URL: https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/1_4-Public-engagement_-engagement1/Podcasts/ClusterConversations/Episode-12/index.html

Further details

Episode number: 12

Full text

[music] Speaker 1: Cluster Conversations, a podcast by Africa Multiple. Speaker 1: Welcome to Cluster Conversations. My name is Cassandra Mark Teason. I am leader of the Junior Research Group African Knowledges and the History Publication, and I'm here with the current research fellow at the Africa Multiple Cluster, Noemi Alfieri of the New University of Lisbon. Welcome, Noemi. Speaker 2: Hello, glad to be here and thanks Cassandra for being my host during my fellowship at the cluster. Speaker 1: So Noemi, one of the reasons that we're here, a topic that brought us together, is our joint interest in journals that were published on the African continent around the nineteen sixties and seventies. In my work, I've been looking at post-independence history journals that were produced by different historical societies and also in different academic centers across the continent. You have been looking at literary journals in your work that were, by the way, also published in the African diaspora. Could you say a few words about your interest in literature from Africa? Speaker 2: Yes. So actually I was initially trained in modern languages and literatures at the University of Turin, which is the city in which I was born. And at the time when I did my degree and my master, I was mainly studying, I would say European languages and literatures. So I was focusing on Spanish and Portuguese and in a course that was called Iberian and Ibero-American cultures and literatures, I guess. So this was really traditional course. I spent one year of my master in Italy, then the second in Portugal. That was where I started reading novels dealing with liberation movements, decolonization and especially with the Angolan context. And it's interesting because this mainly happened outside the university. In the university I was still studying much more about classics of the Western canon and traditional Portuguese literature and so on. And I became interested in Third Worldism,… Read the full text about 2,774 words