Art and Trauma in Africa ─ Representations of Reconciliation in Music, Visual Arts, Literature and Film

The traumas of conflict and war in postcolonial Africa have been widely documented, but less well-known are their artistic representations. A number of recent films, novels and other art forms have sought to engage with and overcome post-colonial atrocities and to explore the attempts of reconciliation commissions towards peace, justice and forgiveness. This creativity reflects the memories and social identities of the artists, whilst offering a mirror to African and worldwide audiences coming to terms with a collective memory that is often traumatic in itself. Questioning perception and interpretation, these new art forms challenge the inexpressible nature of atrocities. This groundbreaking volume will inspire those interested in African history and politics as well as broader cultural and artistic studies.

Lizelle Bisschoff is a Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Research Fellow in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, conducting a three-year research project into digital African arts. She is the Founder and previous Director of the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival in Scotland, now in its eighth year. She holds a PhD in African Cinema from the University of Stirling, in Scotland, for which she researched the role of women in Southern and West African cinema. She has previously conducted a two-year postdoctoral research project into the emerging East African film industries, while based in the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Lizelle has published several articles on sub-Saharan African cinema and regularly attends film festivals in Africa as jury member and speaker. Stefanie Van de Peer is a Research Co-ordinator at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She received her PhD from the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her research focuses on women’s filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa. Until 2011 she was Co-Director of the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival. She was Research Fellow at the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center in Massachusetts, where she also worked on women in cinema. She has published on Tunisian, Egyptian, Moroccan, Syrian and Lebanese women’s films and programmed films for the Middle Eastern Film Festival in Edinburgh, the REEL Festival in Damascus and Beirut and the Boston Palestine Film Festival.