Since the peculiarities of African predispositions, especially through the negritude movement, were anchored in dance and participatory art, and African diaspora literature by Paule Marshall, Maya Angelou, and Taiye Selasi foregrounded dance, homecoming, and healing, there has not been comprehensive examinations of these transcendental signs that purport to reenact community or express a being-in-common. The panel is attentive to the tautological nature of these tropes. It therefore offers critical examinations of the communal practices of joy and sorrow in African and African diasporic literary and cultural forms (film, theatre, dance, novels, poetry: dirge or poetry of mourning). The theoretical approaches are varied and complimentary, ranging from performance studies, popular culture, feminism, postcolonial and decolonial thoughts, digital culture, etc.

Cristovão Nwachukwu begins with a focus on genre fiction and examines spiritual homecomings in Freshwater (2018) by Akwaeke Emezi. He argues that scholarship on Emezi's debut novel has yet to analyze the different pathways of healing that African cosmology offers. He will describe the physical, psychological, and spiritual traumas associated in the novel with the lack of cognizance of the spiritual communities. To develop this analysis, Nwachukwu will combine trauma theory, African diaspora studies, and postcolonial studies to examine how colonial efforts to efface African cosmology inform the symbolic journey of the hero across the diaspora by which the character can be healed once they return to Nigeria, their geographical homeland. This presentation aims to discuss literary representations of healing modes that transcend material bounds and therefore highlight unexplored healing potentials of communal culture.

Saumya Lal underscores the variety of affective textures that mark communal practices of joys and sorrows in Bernadine Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other, depicting an array of relationships that its Black British women characters share with their community members. She will argue that Evaristo's novel illustrates the multivalent role of empathy in shaping communal affects. Challenging the commonplace invocations of empathy as a gateway to communal harmony, she suggests that the novel's empathic engagement with others' painful and joyful experiences can lead to various emotional responses, ranging from compassion to envy and anger and anxiety. Drawing on the works of affect theorists such as Sara Ahmed and Sianne Ngai as well as empathy scholars such as Carolyn Pedwell and Suzanne Keen, Lal suggests that the novel refuses to evacuate "ugly feelings" from its vision of community, even as it recognizes the ethical possibilities of empathic sharing. By juxtaposing multiple characters' perspectives and the poetic writing style that stresses relationality, Lal highlights the multivalent effects of empathic interactions and the overall celebratory atmosphere that points to Evaristo's plurality of affects that enable community formations.

Gabriel Bámgbóṣé traces the Threnodic Presence in Biyi Bandele's Film Adaptation of Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman. His presentation revisits Soyinka's play through its cinematic re-envisioning in the Netflix film Ẹlẹṣin Ọba: The King's Horseman (2022), directed by Biyi Bandele. The question he poses is how Bandele's Ẹlẹṣin Ọba responds to the critical-aesthetic challenge of the threnodic essence in Soyinka's play, or realizes the mythopoetic consciousness of the tragic drama and the scenes of communal music and dance that powerfully bring the rituals of celebration and mourning to life?

S. Ama Wray illuminates how implicit social codes are contemporarily enacted within a Ghanaian Village in the Volta Region, bordering Togo. Her analysis draws on the regular social song, music, and dance gatherings in Kopeyia Village that support the community's well-being and cohesion. She argues that within these settings, communion and reunion are automatically rendered; enrapture and joy is shared; and individual contemplative stillness, at times, is observed within the various phases of the event. Newcomers are guided by regular members that have both social and creative capital to teach them how to participate in the specifics of their autopoetic, fractal-coded system. Wray's contribution will discuss spiritual-informed social practice framed by song, drum, and dance.

Ibironke will conclude by showing how Senghor, Paule Marshall, Maya Angelou, and Taiye Selasi, reaffirmed shared humanity and mutually constituted destiny through dance. He does do by tracking the circulation and transference of affect, their therapeutic quality, and wellness functionality in African communal forms and practices not limited to the Dionysian aspects of African literary culture but also art, including visual and performance arts.