Bring a Problem, Present a Text.

In this session, participants are encouraged to present a textual, methodological, or other research-related ‘problem’ that they are wrestling with in order to receive input and advice from the group.

‘In Translation’

A guided reading and practical workshop, in memory of Pierre Joris (1946-2025). Led by Sabrina Sampaio Martins (UNIGE).

Work-in-progress papers.

Michael Boog (UNIBE): ‘Labor Transformations and Global Form in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017)’.

Aïcha Bouchelaghem (UNIGE), Caroline Martin (UNIGE) and Patrizia Zanella (UNINE/UNIL). ‘The PhD Experience at Home and Abroad: On Academic Mobility and the Writing Process’.

‘Indigenous Cosmological Ecologies and Decolonial Wonder’.

Dr Ho’esta Mo’e’hahne (UCLA):
https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/moehahne-hoesta/.

Environmental violence and genocide remain persistent concerns in the Indigenous expressive cultures of North America. At the same time, speculative storytelling and queer aesthetics have become burgeoning spaces in contemporary Indigenous literatures. Drawing on Indigenous theories of speculation as well as Indigenous environmental thought, Dr. Mo’e’hahne’s talk will trace the ways that contemporary Indigenous fiction and visual art imagine radical possibilities for human and more-than-human peoples who endure ecological violence in Canada and beyond. Reading Chelsea Vowel’s (Métis, Lac Ste. Anne) short story, “Maggie Sue,” alongside Vowel’s activism and public intellectual work, Dr. Mo’e’hahne will analyse Vowel’s remappings of Indigenous urbanised homelands through queer sensations, rich cosmological knowledges, and deep understandings of history and ecology. Published in Vowel’s pathbreaking fiction collection, Buffalo is the New Buffalo (2022), the short story follows an Indigiqueer human protagonist who enters the spirit world outside of a grocery store in suburban Edmonton, Alberta. Smitten with the female Cree shape-shifting fox that she encounters, the protagonist follows the being through the streets before being transported to an alternative space-time above the city, where animal peoples have reclaimed the prairies from settler colonialism. Dr. Mo’e’hahne proposes that Vowel’s wonderous ecologies transcend the apocalyptic, colonial present while also gesturing to more ethical relations between humans and non-humans. The workshop will consist of a lecture followed by discussion of different methods for analysing diverse cultural texts, including contemporary fiction, speculative narratives, eco-literatures, visual art, queer and trans literatures, and urban geography. Participants are invited to read Vowel’s short story before the workshop and participants will take part in collaborative discussions of the piece in light of current conversations that are taking place in the environmental humanities, studies of genre, decolonial theory, gender studies, Indigenous studies, American studies, global Anglophone literary studies, visual culture, and media studies.

Writing Workshop.

In this practical session doctoral students will have the opportunity to present and receive friendly and constructive feedback on a piece of writing they are currently working on. Information about how to participate in the writing workshop will be communicated by the mailing list.

‘Poetic Powers: Workhop with aja monet’

Calling all storytellers, visionaries, and lovers of language. This workshop is an exploration of the power of metaphor and simile in our everyday lives. How does language shape and arrange our world as well as our ability to imagine a new one? Join aja monet for an intimate and holistic poetry workshop where we will create new work and share what is discovered with one another. You don’t have to write poetry to be a poet, however all poets see the power of poetics in everyday life. Let’s celebrate the human search for meaning and encourage the strength of our inner voice.

Interested attendees are requested to sign up for this event on the website of Les Créatives (a link will be communicated via the mailing list when it becomes live). Attendees should bring a pen and paper to write on.

Please note that this event will take place between 18h00-19h30 in the exhibition room ‘Afrosonica’ at the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (MEG).

Listening party!

This session is in anticipation of a planned March 2026 workshop by Prof. Tsitsi Ella Jaji, “When Words Meet Music: Notes on Translation, Collaboration, and Diverse Audiences.” We will discuss Prof. Jaji’s chapter “Stereomodernism: Amplifying the Black Atlantic,” alongside the corresponding audio resources (cf. Chapter 1) available on the companion website. Attendees are invited to bring a short text and/or recording that is in dialogue with the chapter or invites further exploration of the chapter’s questions: “Just what kind of solidarity can be generated by music? Or literature?” 

‘Landscapes of the Mind’.

In this session Simon Swift (UNIGE) and Penny Bradshaw (Cumbria University) will speak about their SNSF Agora project ‘Landscapes of the Mind’ which brings refugees and migrants into areas of natural beauty in Switzerland and Britain to help develop mindfulness and creativity, under the tutelage of the Romantic poets, novelists and political theoreticians who wrote about these locations, and in dialogue with contemporary writers, artists and mindfulness practitioners.