Writing as a duty to memory: Fiction in the context of Post- Genocide Rwanda

This Mitacs research project involves a series of writing workshops with contemporary Rwandan fiction writers, and interviews with academics in literature departments in Rwandese institutions, editors and literary event organizers on different aspects of Rwandan literature, specifically around the common theme of place of fiction in collective memory. Both will be conducted in conjunction with Mount Kigali University, Huza Press (Kigali) and Goethe institute Kigali, and will culminate in an anthology of contemporary Rwandan short fiction, and a collection of interviews/essays to be published as a book in Canada and digitally. The project’s main objective is to produce a primary reference resource for contemporary Rwandan fiction writing for Canadian and global readers, writers and academics, which will become a basis for dialogue between Rwandan writers and the rest of the literary world about fictional representations and accounts of traumatic experiences and memories. The material will become an authoritative reference that can be used to develop instructional curriculum for studying Rwandan literature. The researcher also hopes to create an intercontinental network of writers and readers, by connecting Rwandan writers to Canadian literary spaces and vice versa. This project opens an opportunity for Concordia and Mount Kigali universities for future collaborations.

Faculty Supervisor:

Mikhail Iossel

Student:

Partner:

Mount Kigali University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education; Other; Social Innovation

University:

Concordia University

Program: