Mellon Seminar on Human Rights in Africa Continues with a Lecture by Professor Frank Ukadike
N. Frank Ukadike, associate professor of communications and African and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University, will deliver a public lecture at Washington and Lee University on Jan. 29 at 4:45 p.m. in Northen Auditorium, Leyburn Library.
The title of the talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Recent Trends in African Cinema.” Refreshments will be served.
In his lecture, Ukadike, one of the foremost experts on African cinema, will explore trends in African cinematic practices from its inception in the 1960s to the evolution of Nollywood. “My lecture will focus on the emergence of resounding human rights narratives that are deeply indexed in wider historical circumstances, conceptual frameworks and representational paradigms,” said Ukadike, “as well as ideological vestiges that problematize gender roles in times of crises, with special tangents on rape, violence, bereavement, memory, trauma, healing and the search for transcendence.”
He is widely published in scholarly journals and anthologies, including “Critical Approaches to African Cinema Discourse,” (ed., 2014) and “African Cinema: Narratives, Perspectives and Poetics” (2014).
His research interests include Black Diaspora Cinemas, Third World Cinema, Film History and Criticism and Cultural Studies. He is also Professor-at-Large and Distinguished Professor of Film Studies in the School of Visual and Performing Arts, College of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences, Kwara State University in Nigeria.
Ukadike’s lecture is one of several in a year-long seminar titled Human Rights in Africa: A Transdisciplinary Approach. The seminar has been made possible by the Center for International Educational with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The seminar includes other public lectures, book colloquia, a film series and a workshop for high school students during this winter term.
