Poetics of Afroeuropean Mobilities in Francophone African Literatures
Funders
Main funder
Leaders
This project examines how Francophone African literatures from the mid-20th century to the present represent forms of human physical travel (e.g., pedestrianism, automobility, aeromobility, maritime travel, travel in public transport) in the wider context of different Afroeuropean mobilities: student mobilities, tourism and exploration, professional mobilities, criminal mobilities, return travel, and clandestine travel. The project asks what sorts of meanings the text material attaches to Afroeuropean mobilities, how mobility generates meanings of places, and how the theme of mobility translates into literary form.
The project produces new knowledge about the representation of mobility in Francophone African literatures in a way that pays attention to the evolution of the theme and its formal features throughout the period. The project recognises Africans in Europe as mobile subjects and travellers, not only as migrants, and defines Europe as a postcolonial continent. It is through the intertwinement of mobility studies with postcolonial literary analysis that the project contributes to the renewal of science. The project also seeks to develop analytical tools for reading mobilities in literature.
News
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Chapter on historical Afroeuropean mobilities
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Literature provides insight into the meanings of mobility and place
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European Hotels and Postcolonial Malaise in Simon Njami’s “African Gigolo”
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Chapter on literary representations of public transport
Keywords
Publications
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Alienation, Abjection and the Mobile Postcolonial City: Public Transport in Ousmane Sembène’s “Niiwam” and Yvonne Vera’s Without a Name
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. Teoksessa: García, Patricia; Toivanen, Anna-Leena(toim.) , 2024. Urban Mobilities in Literature and Art Activism. s. 131-153. Palgrave Macmillan -
Diasporiset kotiinpaluut ranskankielisessä afrikkalaisessa nykykirjallisuudessa
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. 2024. Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen aikakauslehti avain. 21: 14-31 -
Historical Afroeuropean and Transatlantic Mobilities in Contemporary Francophone Afrodiasporic Fiction
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. Teoksessa: Losambe, Lokangaka; Ojaide, Tanure(toim.) , 2024. The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature. s. 223-233. Routledge -
Reading Migration Literature through a Mobility Studies Lens
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. Teoksessa: Adair, Gigi; Fasselt, Rebecca; McLaughlin, Carly(toim.) , 2024. The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature. s. 184-193. Routledge -
Peripheralising the Metropolis: Aeromobile Portrayals of Paris in Francophone African Literatures
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. 2023. Mobility humanities. 2: 78-95 -
Modes of transport and rhythms of mobility in Bernard B. Dadié’s Un Nègre à Paris (1959) and Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s L’Africain du Groenland (1981)
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. 2022. Studies in travel writing. 2021; 25: 504-521 -
Unruly Landscapes of a Diasporic Return: Mobility and Memory in Michèle Rakotoson’s Juillet au pays: Chroniques d’un retour à Madagascar (2007)
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. 2022. Transfers. 12: 70-83 -
Urban Mobilities in Francophone African Return Narratives
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. Teoksessa: Lievel, Ameel(toim.) , 2022. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies. s. 209-222. Routledge -
A "Migration Novel" Goes Mobile: Novel Review
Toivanen, Anna-Leena; Taylor, Joanna E. 2021. Transfers. 11: 143-147 -
Aeromobilities of diasporic returnees in Francophone African literatures
Toivanen, Anna-Leena. 2021. Mobilities. 16: 597-611