Chair of Africana Studies, Tricia Rose, welcomes Chinua Achebe to
Africana Studies at Brown
Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories
-Chinua Achebe
We are honored and thrilled to welcome Professor Achebe to Africana Studies and to the Brown community. Achebe is a towering figure in African literature and postcolonial thought. Achebe's status as a world-class writer consolidates our already prodigous literary strengths. Chinua Achebe completes our quartet of highly distinguished writers: Ama Ata Aidoo, George Lamming and John Edgar Wideman.
In addition, Achebe's ongoing insights into the necessity and complexity of global, cross-racial translations and exchanges will augment our significant departmental strenghths in the politics of cultural expression and post-colonial thought and practices. But his impact and value extends to the campus as a whole as well. As Barrymore Bogues, Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies notes: "Achebe belongs to a genre of anti-colonial writing which has become a major force in world literature from the mid 20th century onward. His coming to Brown at this point is propitious; it accelerates the process of our campus wide internationalization efforts, and further opens of the study of Africa on Brown's campus."
The Chinua Achebe Colloquium, the organizing framework for his intellectual, pedagogical and artistic works on campus, will be a vibrant venue for an array of projects ranging from conferences on governance in Africa to dramatic readings and stagings of his works, classroom lectures, projects on the politics of language and translation as well as invited distinguished lecturers.
For the entire department, having Chinua Achebe and his family join us is a great privilege. Listen below to some of our faculty talk about Achebe and his importance to world literature, post-colonial thought and to our intellectual project in the Department of Africana Studies.
-Tricia Rose, Professor and Chair