Upcoming Africanist conferences & events
To inform the editors of the ASAUK newsletter and website about upcoming conferences and workshops, please contact Simon Heap at editor(AT)asauk.net
Conferences Future. . .
United Kingdom
‘Exploring Childhood Studies in the Global South: Africa in Focus’
Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences (ICOSS),
The Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth (CSCY),
University of Sheffield
16 May 2012
Over the last twenty years or so childhood studies has grown significantly, especially within Europe and North America. However, although a number of theoretical and methodological publications have been produced situated within this field, very few of these studies focus on childhood in the Global South. Instead, the majority of studies that focus on the global south have been empirical, often situated within theoretical frameworks that have been developed in the Global North. As a result, while there are numerous empirical-based studies on the lived experiences of children’s lives within this context, there remains a distinct absence of the global south in the theorizing and methodological discussions that take place about researching childhood from a range of different disciplines. Therefore, the aim of this one-day workshop is to explore ways of expanding childhood studies beyond Western Europe and North America both conceptually and methodologically in order to ensure that the priorities and perspectives of childhood studies researchers focusing on Africa and the global south more generally are taken into account in existing paradigms of childhood studies, which draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives.
The workshop will seek to initiate discussion around questions such as: what are the key theoretical and methodological issues for childhood researchers focusing on Africa; how, if at all, do theoretical, methodological and ethical issues relating to childhood research in the North transfer to various contexts in the Global South with a particular focus on Africa; and what are the overlaps between issues focused on in the North and the South and how can these be utilized to better represent priorities in the Global South within childhood studies?
The day will be divided into two sessions. The morning session will consist of three presentations by Professor Allison James (Department of Sociological Studies/Co-Director of CSCY, University of Sheffield), Dr Gina Porter (Senior Research Fellow, Durham University) and Dr Yaw Ofosu-Kusi (Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Studies, University of Education, Winneba, Ghana). The afternoon session will allow participants to break out into smaller groups to discuss issues arising from the morning session in greater detail and link the issues to broader perspectives emerging from the Global South more generally.
Conference fee of £35 per person includes lunch and snacks. Bookings by 30 April 2012 to Dawn Lessels, Administrator of CSCY: d.j.lessels(AT)sheffield.ac.uk Places are limited so bookings will be accepted on a first come basis. This event is partially funded by the Royal African Society/ASAUK.
For further information about the content of the workshop, contact: Dr Afua Twum-Danso Imoh: a.twum-danso(AT)sheffield.ac.uk
‘Africa and the Atlantic World, 1450-1850’
The Maritime and Oceanic History Workshop and The Centre of African Studies, Graduate Conference, University of Cambridge
22–23 June 2012.
This conference aims to bring together interdisciplinary and international researchers whose work relates to Africa and its relationship with the Atlantic across the whole of the early modern period. The organisers welcome proposals from graduate students and early-career researchers from all disciplines within the humanities, belonging to institutions within the UK as well as abroad. The conference will present a variety of different approaches and perspectives concerning the study of Africa in the Atlantic world, and connect the most innovative and exciting new research in the field.
Subjects for papers may include historical events, processes and discourses, philosophical developments, and political issues. Topics that could be addressed include the place of Africa in the Atlantic World, overlap within Africa between the Atlantic and other spaces (e.g. the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean); deconstructing ‘Africa’: variety, diversity, and change; African perceptions of Europeans, the transmission of African goods/ideas/art to Europe and America; Empire and colonialism, European conflict in Africa, the fragility of the European presence; slavery and the slave trade, Africa’s internal slave economies, alternatives to slavery and African agriculture, perceptions of race, agency and resistance; the creation and conceptualisation of contested spaces (e.g. the Gold Coast/Ivory Coast), hybridity and cosmopolitanism in ports and littoral spaces; and science and nature, tropical medicine and exploration. Harvard’s Professor Vincent Brown will deliver the keynote lecture, and will be joined by Richard Drayton (KCL), David Abulafia (Cambridge), Francisco Bethencourt (KCL), William O’Reilly (Cambridge), Anastasia Stouraiti (Goldsmiths), Manuel Barcia (Leeds) and John McAleer (NMM) in chairing the speaking sessions.
250 word abstracts and an academic CV and stating that you are an ASAUK member [because the original deadline has passed and ASAUK has special dispensation] by 22 January 2012 to: africaatlanticconference(AT)gmail.com.
International
‘Sports and Community Building in Africa and the Global South’
8th Sports in Africa Conference
The Institute of the African Child and the Center for Sports Administration, Ohio University, Athens, USA
6–7 April 2012.
The 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Brazil, and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar confirm the global reach of elite sports and the increased participation of Africa and the Global South. Does this trend denote fuller integration of the Global South into a world system of sports where each community thrives? Or does it indicate a gradual transformation of traditional approaches to community building and a changing definition of community itself? Building on a debate that started at the Sports in Africa Symposium at Ohio University in 2002, this conference seeks to understand and discuss the effects of mega-events and global marketing on local sports. To what degree are communities integrated into global sport and what kinds of loyalty do mega events generate locally? What roles do/can sports play in local communities in Africa and the Global South in the face of transnational sports economies? Can sports become a site for communities to reaffirm their own particularity, create new forms of solidarity and reinvent themselves?
The 2012 conference encourages presentations on themes such as sport and community health; international sponsors and the nature of local sports; elite versus community sport: which way forward?; sports and education; sports and wellness in local communities; global sports in the workplace; sport and community building; globalization: how can local sports survive?; sports and rural communities; sports in the city: new challenges, new communities; financing local sports; impact of mega events on the environment; mega-events, urban landscape and architecture; media and imagined communities; and sport and culture.
For more information contact: Gerard A. Akindes: akindesg(AT)ohio.edu
350 word abstracts by 4 March 2012 via: www.sportinafrica.org/forms/abstract_sub.php
‘Under the Palaver Tree’
8º Congreso Ibérico de Estudios Africanos/8th Iberian Congress of African Studies, Madrid, Spain
14–16 June 2012.
49 panels have been set up; each panel will accept 4 or 5 papers per session (each panel may have more than one session). 400 word abstracts by 31 January 2012 via www.ciea8.org/ocs/index.php?conference=CIEA2012&schedConf=index
‘Africa’s Golden Jubilee: Assessing 50 Years of Scholarship and Development in Africa’
1st International Interdisciplinary Annual Conference
Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), Langata, Nairobi, Kenya
27–30 June 2012.
During this decade, many African countries are celebrating 50 years of independence. CUEA would like to take this opportunity to celebrate accomplishments in scholarship and development with scholars, researchers, academics, students and leaders in Africa, and other parts of the world. This is an interdisciplinary international conference that seeks to highlight achievements for the last 50 years and lessons for the future. The conference will consist of seven symposia organized by CUEA’s six faculties and an interdisciplinary panel as follows: the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in research and development in Africa: fifty years later; management of resources and development in Africa: fifty years of shifting paradigms and strategies; education: growth and development in the past fifty years”; law and development in Africa; science, technology and development in Africa: five decades of experiments, innovations and inventions; the Church and development in Africa: fifty years in African hands; research and development in Africa; and five decades of interdisciplinary research in Africa.
300-500 word abstracts for papers and panels by 30 March 2012 to Rev Dr John Lukwata: lukwata(AT)cuea.edu or Professor Maurice Amutabi: amutabi(AT)gmail.com
‘Cultures, Identities, Nationalities, and Modernities in Africa and the African Diaspora’
Second Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora
Peninsula Resort, Aja, Lagos, Nigeria,
2–4 July 2012.
The Ibadan Cultural Studies Group, University of Ibadan, in collaboration with the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), welcome papers that explore empirical and theoretical aspects of any or all of our four conceptual grids: cultures, identities, nationalities, and modernities. Papers may investigate and analyze the manifestation of cultural politics, identity contests, nationalist ferment, and competing modernities in specific geographic and trans-national contexts where Africans and peoples of African descent fight out their existential and ameliorative struggles. The organisers also encourage papers that interrogate and question the very categories of cultures, nationalities, identities, and modernities as they relate to the experiences of African and Africa-descended peoples and institutions instead of taking them as binding, fixed and self-evident frames of analysis. The definitional and semiotic latitude for interpreting these categories belongs to authors, as we have no bounded, restrictive definitions in mind.
There is a sense of urgency to the thematic of the conference based on the uneven and unpredictable effects of globalization, development, technology, new modes of communication, wars, and migration among others. Sometimes the effects of these factors can be utterly tragic and destructive without relief or redress. Fortunately, people and communities are not always passive victims. The categories of culture, identity, nationalism and modernity allow people to make visible the multiple, overlapping and intricate forms that people's agency and creativity take in response to local, national and global forces. Papers should respond to the need to capture and illuminate the emerging texts, narratives, claims, and actions of Africans and Africa-descended peoples and communities at the interstices of simultaneously unfolding local and global events and forces.
Culture and notions of identity, nationalism, and modernity are subjective, malleable, and dynamic concepts, contested in both their theoretical and programmatic forms. These concepts should elicit lively conversations about how they are constituted, emptied, reconstituted, and put to instrumental use by Africans and Africa-descended and influenced peoples all over the world. The only advisory constant in our conceptualization is a belief that the four categories pivot, in the final analysis, on the lived experiences of the peoples and communities that are the subjects of our study, and that our inquiries into them should reflect the dynamism, indeterminacy, fluidity, and contestations of lived experience rather than the rigidity and fixity of academic descriptions and definitions. But culture, nationalist consciousness, identification, and modernity are also significant for their realness to those who use them to make sense of their lives. For these people, the fluidity of these concepts is immaterial, since they foreground concrete, life-altering political and economic aspirations. For this reason, presentations that consider these categories as foundational concepts in analyzing African and African Diasporic communities and phenomena and refuse to question their quotidian deterministic power are also welcome.
Papers may explore one or more of the following areas: acculturation, Afrocentricity, Afropolitanism, Atlantic Africa, blackness, citizenship, commodification of culture, contested identities, contested modernities, Creolization, cultural patrimony, cultural power, cultural propriety, culture and ethnicity, culture of politics, custom and the customary, diasporic African identities, ethnic identity, ethno-nationalism, ethno-religious identity, gendered identities, global Africanity, globalizing modernities, identity conflicts, indigeneity, indigenous movements, internal displacement, material culture, migration, multiculturalism, national consciousness, nationalities and trans-nationalities, neo-traditionalism, Pan-Africanism, parallel modernities, politics of culture, postcolonial dysfunction, postcoloniality, race consciousness, refugees/returnees, regionalism, religious culture, ritual, secessions, sociolinguistics, symbolism, the modern in question and traditional modernities. See website: www.ibadanculturalstudiesgroup.org/toyinfalolaconference for updates.
250 word abstracts by 30 March 2012 to Professor Ademola Dasylva: dasylvang(AT)yahoo.com or Lady Jane Acquah: ljane26(AT)gmail.com
‘Commemorating the June 1962 Conference of “African Writing of English Expression”’
Makerere University, Uganda
12–14 July 2012.
In view of the significance of the June 1962 Conference at the then Makerere College in charting the terrain of African Literature, the Department of Literature of Makerere University will host the 2012 Conference and make it an occasion for reflection on the key strands and developments in African literature since the 1962 Conference. It is planned that participants will analyse the new issues and directions, manifest or latent, in contemporary African literary scholarship. The organisers now invite submissions of abstracts and panels from writers and critics, publishers and distributors, and all who are interested in African literature.
The June 1962 ‘Conference of African Writing of English Expression’ was not only the very first major international gathering of writers and critics of African literature on the African continent; it was also held at the very cusp of political independence for most African countries. The 1962 conference especially provided platform for designating the field of African literature. The 2012 conference will provide opportunity for analysis of the constellation of the forces that called African literature into being, and provided impetus to African literary, artistic, and cultural imaginaries. The conference also comes at a time when neoliberal regimes and dispensations have sought to undermine humanities knowledge productions sites, and to entrench commercialization of artistic creativity. All this has attracted diverse responses from artists, scholars, and the broader publics, and which merit critical attention at this opportune moment.
The conference organisers seek papers and panel proposals that address the following themes: African literature and the language question; gender, feminism, sexuality in African literature; African literature and allied arts; African and African diaspora literatures; orality, writing, and visuality and African literature; Intellectual and cultural property issues in African literary economies; prison writing, censorship and political repression and African literature; new media and the circularity of African literary and cultural forms; politics of literary prizes; African popular arts and cultures in local, national and global perspectives; African literature after Apartheid and the Cold War; literary theory and contemporary African literary scholarship; and the future of African literary societies, magazines, and journals.
300 words abstracts for papers and panels by ASAUK members by 31 January 2012 to Okello Ogwang and Sarah Namulondo: litconference(AT)chuss.mak.ac.ug
‘Democracy, Governance and Curbing Corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa’
Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, USA
10–12 August 2012.
The purpose of this conference is to bring together an international group of scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplines to collectively explore the multiple facets of the problems of democratic governance, particularly as they relate to corruption, and to suggest concrete strategies geared toward solving these problems in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Participants of the conference will be challenged to move from theoretical frameworks to practical strategies for improving democratic institutions, governance processes, and curbing corruption. Issues that scholars and practitioners could address include: problems of democracy and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa and their potential solutions; the role of civil society organizations in democracy and governance in Sub-Saharan Africa; problems of transparency and accountability in the local and national governments in Sub-Saharan Africa and in international relations; ethics and decision making in Sub-Saharan Africa; origins and definitions of corruption in the historical and cultural context of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example in pre-colonial, colonial, and, post-independence periods; corruption in public bureaucracies; corruption in business practices of international corporations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa and local business and the intersections of these with corruption in governance; evaluation of anti-corruption strategies recommended and implemented by the governments in Sub-Saharan Africa and bi-lateral and multi-lateral development agencies; the roles of international NGOs and local development organizations in fighting corruption; the roles of information and communication technologies to track the implementation of anti-corruption strategies; challenges in coordinating anti-corruption strategies; and the role of educational institutions in advancing democratic governance and fighting corruption.
One page abstracts by 31 January 2012 to: Dr Gedeon Mudacumura: gmudacumura(AT)cheyney.edu.
‘Trust and Reconciliation in Post-Conflict Societies’
An AEGIS Thematic Conference
Centre for African Studies, Basel, Switzerland
4–6 October 2012.
Violent conflicts are often perceived as a complete break with the past, a disintegration of social ties, the destruction of ordinary economic activities, a loss of cultural creativity – in short: as an incisive and sometimes irreversible societal rupture. The rebuilding of society after conflict is an enormous task that, so it seems, cannot build on much except the presumption that all actors must have a shared interest in a reliable social order. It should allow all actors to make a living and to find a place in the post-conflict society. Violent peace and a lingering conflict would be the unattractive alternative.
The instruments to overcome the difficulties related to a post-conflict situation are many, and they have been the subject of highly controversial debates in the literature. Legal action, formal and informal processes of mediation, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, and a wide range of other means have been used to address past injustice and the restoration of normal social relations between former belligerents. Most prominent became the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions set up by then President Nelson Mandela after the end of Apartheid. They served as a model for many similar institutions in other former conflict regions of Africa and beyond, for instance in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and most recently in Côte d’Ivoire. Their uneven success conceals, however, that there are more options to rebuild society after conflict – and it also ignores the many initiatives that build on what iterated from the former social order into the post-conflict setting. Even war-torn societies do not simply disintegrate. They maintain some sort of social order – though of a different kind than a settled and regulated peaceful society.
Trust is perhaps a conceptual alternative to the conventional disintegration metaphor. Trust is generally seen as one of the major resources that is lacking in post-conflict society. But trust does not simply fade away in a violent crisis. Rather, it changes its form. While trust in institutions may diminish or even disappear, personal trust becomes more important than ever. How does this transformation of trust affect the rebuilding of society? And to what degree is it possible to foster processes of conflict transformation by building on the existing forms of trust?
This conference explores alternative views of the restructuration of social life in post-conflict societies and tries to compare different trajectories of coping with the past. It starts from the assumption that a violent crisis affects social relations deeply but does not bring them to an end. Social relations persist, albeit in different forms, so the challenge is to conceptualize alternative trajectories of societal rebuilding. The conference invites scholars to think about alternatives concepts that may be more adapted to the particularities of local societies than the Christian model of sin, confession and absolution.
Possible contributions to the conference should address one or several of the following issues: how are institutionalized processes of reconciliation perceived by the actors; what are the comparative advantages and shortcomings of the different forms of coping with a violent past; and are there conceptual or theoretical and empirical alternatives to the usual models of societal disintegration and reconciliation?
250 word abstracts by 30 March 2012 to Sandra Burri: s.burri(AT)unibas.ch
‘Extraterritoriality of Languages, Literatures and Civilizations: Assessments and Prospects’, Université Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée et Créteil, Paris, France
18–20 October 2012.
As a legal concept that appeared in the 19th century and originated in international law, extraterritoriality (or exterritoriality) initially established the principle according to which a person is not necessarily subject to the laws of the territory on which he or she is located. However, as George Steiner has shown (Extraterritorial, Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution, 1971), the concept can be enlarged and transposed within the cultural field. Applied to languages, literatures and civilizations, it suggests that, under the effects of the political upheavals of the 20th century and of contemporary globalization, the political territory has lost its old unifying and defining powers in cultural matters.
In Europe and elsewhere, the nationalist movements of the 19th century brought the territoriality of cultures to its climax. In the wake of ideas revolving around the national ‘genius’ and Herder’s philosophy, the equation “a nation = a language = a culture” became a model. A particular conception of historiography and philology has subsequently strongly promoted this approach, enabling it to become dominant, even hegemonic. If territoriality remains a crucial principle in the political field nowadays, the idea of an autochthony of languages, literatures and civilizations is now disputed.
History shows that actors of intellectual and cultural life have always been tempted to cross and to transgress territorial borders. In addition, wars, colonisations, decolonisations and other recent political, social and economic transformations have encouraged reconfigurations of the territorial framework, triggering off waves of migration and the rise of the phenomena of exile and diaspora. In turn, these phenomena have generated a massive displacement of cultural events and expressions, which has resulted in the weakening and destabilization of their territorial roots.
Cultural confrontations, forms of hybridization and/or métissage resulting from these displacements often create dynamism, innovation and diversification (Edouard Glissant, Poétique de la relation, 1990). However, one must be careful not to present an overly idyllic picture of this “deterritorialisation” (Gilles Deleuze), or of the “third space” (Homi K. Bhabha) because the transfer or export of cultural norms outside the territory also generates power struggles and leveling phenomena. From this point of view, ‘territorialisation’ can appear as a means of protection and of preservation. Thus Régis Debray has recently warned against the abandonment of the concept of border which, in his opinion, needs rehabilitating (Eloge des frontières, 2010).
Between a ‘(re)-territorialisation’ of nationalist type and a standardizing globalization without borders, how can the extraterritoriality of languages, literatures and civilizations be placed? What are its infra- or supranational expressions? What are the historical models, what is the genesis of this phenomenon? What are the stakes for the contemporary world? Is a cartography or a typology possible beyond or through the diversity of linguistic and cultural areas?
Papers may deal with one or more of the following topics:
topicality and limits of extraterritoriality; between ‘deterritorialisation’ and ‘reterritorialisation’; identity and imaginary constructions of extraterritoriality; waves of migration and diaspora communities; literatures of exile, migrant and postcolonial literatures; multilingual societies and communities, language contact, colonial and postcolonial languages; cultural transfers, circulation of texts and knowledge, translation; cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and postnationalism; and beyond extraterritoriality: literatures, languages and cultures without territory.
250 word abstracts and short biodata by 1 March 2012 to Didier Lassalle: didier.lassalle(AT)u-pec.fr and Dirk Weissmann: weissmann(AT)u-pec.fr
