Visit of Dr. Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang
Dr. Opoku-Agyemang was invited out of two considerations:
- First, he is a literary scholar who has worked extensively on issues of diaspora, memory and the slave trade, a focus which fits in very well with the general theme of the Graduate School (Africa in global perspective)
- Second, he is also the Director of the Office of International Programmes at the University of Cape Coast (Ghana). This makes him a good resource person to establish close contacts between the two universities - with a particular interest on part of the Institute of Social Anthropology (MLU), but also in view of future cooperations with the Graduate School, especially regarding a possible second or third round and the desired incorporation of scholars and students from Asia and Africa.
During his visit, Dr. Opoku-Agyemang gave a lecture on the theme "Tradition in Transition: The Narrative Architecture of the Dilemma Tale as an Interpretative Frame for Reading Morrison’s Beloved." Here he addressed issues of intertextuality - with regard to the transmissions between oral and written literatures as well as to the linkages between African and African American / Diasporic literary traditions. A second theme was concerned with the problem of textual authority and possible alternatives in form of multi-perspective, multivocal approaches. The third line of argument was concerned with questions of historical representation, othering and (post-)colonial experiences.
All these issues were related to the theoretical outlook of the Graduate School, especially to the sections "Translations" and "Text and Context". They also mirrored our discussions during the first Study Day (objectivity, representation, the production of historical knowledge) and provoked new questions to be taken up in further meetings (after the lecture Dr. Opoku Agyemang spoke with Dr. Asma Hilali, post-doc researcher in the section "Text and Context" about the problem of text and authority, which is the theme of our second study day). Dr. Opoku-Agyemang’s lecture emphasized the importance of literature as a global reference system and thereby served as a stimulating input for further discussions within the graduate school.
In the course of his visit, Dr. Opoku-Agyemang had meetings with Prof. Jügen Paul (Oriental Studies), Prof. Richard Rottenburg (IfE) and Prof. Werner Nell (AVL). Prof. Nell expressed his interest in becoming actively involved in the graduate school, which would lead to a broadening of its spectrum by involving literary scholarship.
In the meeting with Prof. Rottenburg, concrete steps were planned with regard to the following issues:
- Dr. Opoku-Agyemang will assist those members of the graduate school whose work focuses on Ghana during their fieldwork (esp. Christoph Langer, Katharina Schramm). This will also extend to students of either graduate school or IfE who are planning projects in Ghana in the future.
- With regard to the project of Christoph Langer, Dr. Opoku-Agyemang will seek to contact students at his university who are interested in doing research on funerals as translocal events in Germany - which could lead to a multi-perspective study group on this issue
- There are plans to develop a joint research project around the historical figure of William Amo, a scholar from the Gold Coast who studied and taught philosophy in Halle and Jena in the 18th century. The memory (and commemoration) of Amo in Ghana and Germany (its commonalities and differences) will be at the centre of this project, which could involve students from both universities. Moreover, literary forms will be explored to narrate his story in a contemporary context.
Apart from the above-mentioned, Dr. Opoku-Agyemang had consultations with Sourav Kargupta (associate member of the Graduate School, interested in postcolonial literatures) and Boris Nieswand (MPI, working on Ghanaian migrants). Furthermore, discussions were held with Katharina Schramm on a joint publication on the memory of the slave trade in Ghana.