Introduction: rethinking African cultural productions / Frieda Ekotto and Kenneth W. Harrow -- The critical present: where is "African literature"? / Eileen Julien -- African writers challenge conventions of postcolonial literary history / Olabode Ibironke -- Provocations: African societies and theories of creativity / Moradewun Adejunmobi -- In praise of the alphabet / Patrice Nganang -- African cultural studies: of travels, accents, and epistemologies / Tejumola Olaniyan -- Le freak, c'est critical and chic: North African scholars and the conditions of cultural production in post-9/11 U.S. academia / Lamia Benyoussef -- Reading "beur" film production otherwise: the poetics of the human and the transcultural / Safoi Babana-Hampton -- Revealing the past, conceptualizing the future on-screen: the social, political, and economic challenges of contemporary filmmaking in Morocco / Valerie K. Orlando -- Thresholds of new African dramaturgies in France today / Maria Minich Brewer -- Island geography as creole biography: Shenaz Patel's Mauritian literary production / Magali Compan.