CLIC nodigt jullie graag uit voor de eerstvolgende WOLEC-sessie die plaatsvindt op donderdag 30 oktober van 12:00 tot ten laatste 13:30 in 5C03. Spreker Isabella Villanova (VUB) zal een lezing geven met als titel: “‘AFROPEMOTIONS’: Rethinking Emotions, Inequality, and Resistance through Afropean Women’s Fiction”.
Isabella Villanova is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoraal Onderzoeker aan de Vakgroep Taal- en Letterkunde van de Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Daarvoor was ze postdoctoraal onderzoeker bij het Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence aan de Universiteit van Bayreuth en aan de Vakgroep Afrikastudies van de Universiteit van Wenen. In 2023–2024 was ze Adjunct-hoogleraar Engelstalige Literatuur aan de University for Foreigners van Perugia. Eerder werkte ze als gastonderzoeker aan de Universiteit van Leeds. Ze promoveerde in 2021 aan de Universiteit van Padua op Engelstalige Afrikaanse literatuur geschreven door vrouwen. Haar proefschrift werd in 2022 bekroond in de categorie “Literatuur en Cultuur” van de Peter Lang Emerging Scholars Competition in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Haar eerste monografie, The Politics of Gender in Nigerian and Zimbabwean Women’s Fiction: Agencies and Strategies of Resistance, verschijnt in 2025 bij Peter Lang. Haar huidige onderzoeksproject aan de VUB, AFROPEMOTIONS, onderzoekt de culturele en politieke rol van emoties in Afro-Europese literatuur van vrouwelijke auteurs. Het project wordt gefinancierd via een Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship (eerste twee jaar) en een Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship van het FWO (derde jaar).
De voertaal is het Engels. Een broodjeslunch wordt voorzien. We vragen u om uw aanwezigheid ten laatste tegen 23 oktober via deze link te bevestigen. Voor meer informatie over WOLEC, klik hier.
Tot dan!
*****
CLIC is excited to invite you to the next WOLEC session, taking place on Thursday 30 October from 12:00 till 13:30 in room 5C03. Isabella Villanova (VUB) will give a lecture titled: “‘AFROPEMOTIONS’: Rethinking Emotions, Inequality, and Resistance through Afropean Women’s Fiction”.
Isabella Villanova is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She has previously held postdoctoral positions at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth and in the Department of African Studies at the University of Vienna. In 2023–24, she served as an Adjunct Professor of Anglophone Literature at the University for Foreigners of Perugia and, prior to that, was a visiting scholar at the University of Leeds. She earned her PhD in Anglophone African women’s writing from the University of Padua in 2021. Her doctoral dissertation was selected as a winner in the “Literature and Culture” category of the 2022 Peter Lang Emerging Scholars Competition in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her first monograph, The Politics of Gender in Nigerian and Zimbabwean Women’s Fiction: Agencies and Strategies of Resistance, is forthcoming with Peter Lang in 2025. Her current research project at VUB, AFROPEMOTIONS, explores the cultural and political implications of emotions in Afro-European women’s literature. The project has been awarded both a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Research Foundation Flanders. It is therefore funded by the MSCA for the first two years and the FWO for the third year.
The lecture will be held in English. A sandwich lunch will be provided. We ask you to confirm your presence via this link by 23 October. For more information about WOLEC, click here.
We hope to see you there!
Abstract
My paper introduces my VUB project, which examines the literary representations of emotions experienced by Afro-descendant women in Afropean (or Afro-European) women’s fiction. This study offers the first affect-based investigation of 21st-century Afropean literature, addressing a gap in existing scholarship and contributing to the development of this emerging field. Its goal is to develop a theoretical model for thematically and formally analysing emotions, while also using Afropean texts as critical sites to explore issues of emotional encounters, gender and racial inequality, and resistance in European societies.
To achieve this, the project analyses a selected corpus of fiction written in English, French, Italian, and German, published between 2005 and 2023 by women of diverse African heritages who live and/or have set their works in various European countries (Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and France). My methodological approach combines an affective perspective grounded in sociology with gender, feminist, and intersectional theories, Afropean and African diaspora studies, postcolonial criticism, and literary analysis at semantic, stylistic, and narratological levels.
In my presentation, I also analyse as case studies the sequel novels In Every Mirror She’s Black (2021) and Everything Is Not Enough (2023) by Nigerian-born, Swedish-based writer Lola Akinmade Åkerström. These narratives follow the lives of Afro-descendant women in Stockholm, Sweden, as they navigate intersecting forms of discrimination—including racism, sexism, classism, and tokenism. After engaging with the concept of “Afropean”, as theorised by scholars such as Jony Pitts (2019), Miano (2020), Otele (2020), and Brancato (2009), I combine literary analysis with an affective lens (Ahmed 2004, 2010) and feminist and intersectional frameworks (Crenshaw 1989, 1990; Ahmed 2014, 2017; hooks 1989) to examine the cultural and political implications of emotions in these novels. In particular, I explore how these emotions reveal the mechanisms of structural inequality in white Swedish society and how they shape the protagonists’ agency and strategies of resistance.
