Stephanie Newell | Critical Ephemera: The Congo Crisis in 1960s Nigerian Popular Plays

Focusing on the eastern Nigerian city of Onitsha in the early 1960s, this talk will show how local authors made bold and original interventions in the Congo Crisis, responding through drama to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, and using their creative license to offer literary interpretations of media reports. Individually boxed meals will be provided for registrants.

About the Speaker

Dr. Stephanie Newell, George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale University. Dr. Newell’s research focuses on media audiences in colonial West Africa and creative writing as articulated through local print cultures, including newspapers, pamphlets, novels, and magazines. Her current book project, Newsprint Worlds: Local Literary Creativity in Colonial West Africa, centers the role of African-owned newspapers in creating platforms and publics for the earliest West African creative writers in English. You can also listen to Dr. Newell’s recent episode on the How to Read podcast here, where she discusses the idea of dirtiness.