Programm statement: The West African Reseach Association is offering an intensive two-week summer on African literary forms and their contexts, with a focus on Senegal .In addition to taking a close look at a number of specific texts, meeting prominent writers, and exploring the interest in local language literacy and new publications in Wolof and Pulaar,we will consider literary production in its relationship to other contemporary art forms .Rap and other forms of popular music, for example, provide a new format and context for proverbs and aphorisms of various sorts, many of which derive from oral traditions, although rap musicians may disavow griotic traditions .In painting, the tradition of "souwerr"(painting on glass) and the " naifs" (painting chronicling popular life and culture) are also informed by vibrant and reconfigured oral culture .The institute will be based at the West African Reseach Center in Dakar, Senegal, a West African country noted for its stability, social harmony, and working democracy.It is intended for faculty who wish to develop and expand teaching or reseach related to African literature .To the extent possible, the institute director and the staff of WARC will help participants pursue individual interests in making reseach contacts or developing teaching materials.

Tentative Schedule and Itinerary: In order to provide as broad a perspective as possible on comtemporary literature and its contexts, participants will be offered a series of lectures, seminars and discussion sessions at WARC, with academics, writers and artists from the region .Participants will also have the opportunity to travel to the historical city of St.Louis and to "ordinary" non-urban centers outside of Dakar.We will conclude with a day in pleasant beach resort on the "petite cote".

Costs: The cost per participant is $2,500.This fee will include the full cost of the seminar sessions at WARC ( all lectures and seminars); fourteen days of single - occupancy hotel accommodations; all local transportation costs; breakfasts, lunches, and approximately one half of the evening meals; and all local and in-country transportation.Participants will be responsible for their own airfare to and from Dakar,bar,telephone and other incidental hotel expenses; and occasional evening meals .

The Institute Directors will be Dr.Eillen Julien,Dr Jane Hale, and Dr Ousmane Sene.

Dr Julien is professor of French and Comperative Literature and Executive Director of the David C.Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, where she develops scholarly exchanges and reseach partnerships that link teachers, scholarsand artists across disciplines and nations.She is a former Guggenheim fellow, founding director of the West African Reseach Center, and the author of literary studies including, most recentlly, "Terrains de rencontres:Cesaire, Fanon and Wright on Culture and Decolonization"(Yale French Studies 90), "The Extroverted African Novel"(II romanzo, ed F.Moretti), " Reading 'Orality'in French Language Novels from Sub-Saharan Africa"(Francophonie Studies:Postcolonial Issues,ed. C. Forsdick, D. Murphy), and "When a Man Loves a Woman: Gender and Cultural Nationalism in Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and Mariama Ba's Une si longue lettre"( African Studies After Gender ?,ed. C. Cole, T. Manuh, S. Miescher, Indiana UP, forthcoming .

Dr.Hale is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University.She has lived and worked in Abeche, Chad as a Peace Corps English teacher and as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Dakar, Senegal .She is the author of two books, one on Samuel Beckett and another on Raymond Queneau, as well as a number of articles, and she is currently writing on the portrayal of literacy in cross-cultural works of art. Dr Hale has taught language and literature at virtually every age and grade level, in the US and abroad .She received the 2001 Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Excellence inTeaching & Counseling at Brandeis, where she teaches courses in French and Francophonie literature and language, Comparative Literature,Education, and Humainities.

Dr. Sene is President of the Association de la Recherche Ouest Africaine(AROA), the West African counterpart of WARA, and teaches in the English Department of University Cheikh Anta Diop (Dakar,Senegal).His teaching and reseach focus on African American literature and culture and their connections to African cultures, especially in the areas of religion and spirituality. Application: Participant in the seminarwill be limited to 12. For more information or application form please contact WARA at adamkis@africa.ufl.edu.or wara@bu.edu A $500 deposit is required to reserve a space upon notification of acceptance to the institute .This deposit will de non-refundable after 15 April 2004. The balance of $ 2,000 must be paid before the start of institute .A detailed program will be sent to all participants in early May.