The Suicide Archive: Reckoning with Resistance 

From the time of slavery to the Algerian war for independence to the "Arab Spring," people have responded to enslavement, colonisation and oppression through acts of suicide. While often occluded from or obscured in colonial archives, self-killing has long been at the centre of African and Caribbean engagements with the colonial past. Reading across literature, film, oral history, archival documents, legal history, and scientific texts, The Suicide Archive (2024) shows how aesthetic forms (literature, film, visual art, performance) preserve powerful histories of resistance and loss. In so doing, the book offers an innovative reading of African, Caribbean, French, and global literary history.

Doyle Calhoun, University Assistant Professor of Francophone Postcolonial Studies (University of Cambridge)

Wednesday, April 9

6pm

Greenleaf Conference Room (100A Jones Hall)

"Please note: this talk will involve discussion of colonial violence and suicide."