International conference 

Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River: "the many-tongued chorus"

6-7 October 2016

Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon

Including a Video Conversation with Caryl Phillips on Crossing the River

This international conference will offer new perspectives on Caryl Phillips’s fifth novel Crossing the River, which is part of the syllabus for the Agrégation. Published in 1993 and the recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1994, Crossing the River weaves together four narratives of forced displacement and throws light on the slave trade in Africa in the 18^th century, the journey back from America to Africa of emancipated slaves in the 19^th century, the ordeal of a former slave turned frontierswoman and defeated pioneer in the American Wild West and the alienation of an Englishwoman and a black GI in England during the Second Word War. Spanning three centuries and criss-crossing three continents, the novel raises questions relating to identity, belonging, uprootedness, responsibility, loss and nostalgia.

Program : https://carylphillips.sciencesconf.org/data/ProgColloquePhillipsweb.pdf

Livret : https://carylphillips.sciencesconf.org/data/Livret_coll_Caryl_phillips280916.pdf

All papers will be peer-reviewed for publication in the scholarly journal CYCNOS, a publication of the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Récits Cultures Et Sociétés of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.