When
Where
As part of the concluding phase of the University of Arizona's UA-CNRS Global Grand Challenges grant on Environmental Justice and Cultural Resistance in Africa, Phyllis Taoua (PI at UA) will host a mini-conference at the University of Arizona from September 3-7, 2024.
The most important contribution the team’s research makes is to show how culture operates and the vital role cultural resistance plays in moving forward differently. As our environment is increasingly endangered, literature and popular culture are playing a vital role in raising awareness and shifting the terms of the debate. Many of the environmental crises in Africa today are not of their own making, most derive from extraverted economies of colonial extraction and climate change due to industrial pollution elsewhere. The team has explored how African actors resist environmental injustice through cultural expression.
The team will meet to share results from our grant and present research together in keeping with expectations associated with the grant. A main objective for the conference will be to allow two doctoral students to present work from their dissertations funded by the grant: Margaux Vidotto at the CNRS (France) and Clara Randimbiarimanana at the University of Arizona (USA).
The PIs and co-PIs on the grant will also present their current research at the conference in addition to two guests: Maëline Le Lay from CNRS (France) and Richard Watts from the University of Washington, Seattle, (USA). The geographical scope has expanded to include Polynesia at this meeting to offer another point of comparison in a critical region.
The conference is open to the campus community, in particular teams with the International Research Laboratory iGlobes, the France-Arizona Institute as well as colleagues, students and staff in departments across campus. We thank our sponsors for the conference: International Laboratory iGlobes, France-Arizona Institute (FAI), Department of French and Italian and the College of Humanities (COH).