Propositions de communication (en français, anglais ou espagnol) à envoyer à: Clément A. Akassi, Department of World Languages and Cultures, Howard University (animanclement@yahoo.fr)
Date limite d’envoi: 3 Novembre 2015
Pour les axes thématiques, voir le lien du Congrès et du CLA: www.clascholars.org
Conference
Word, Image, and Power in Africa and the African Diaspora
Organized jointly by the College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY and Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY
April 1 & 2, 2016
In his 2003 essay “How to Write about Africa,” Binyavanga Wainaina parodies the representation of Africa that has pervaded the literary and cinematic production of Westerners reacting to Africa. These words and images are holdovers from a colonial perspective that saw the continent and its people as the embodiment of the “heart of darkness” (Conrad). These views posit the entire continent as forever lagging behind and, in the words of Wainaina, always seem to focus on the following figures: “the Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty.” Increasingly, these imaginings veil and distort the realities of a continent that is constantly in flux and in the process of numerous changes.
African writers and artists, in their attempt to change this static vision, have set about re-writing Western views of Africa. They deal with issues like political oppression, the student protests in Senegal and Burkina Faso and the Arab spring, to name but a few of the upheavals that the continent has recently experienced. They also define Africa and Africans within the world in terms of Taiye Selasi’s coinage of the term “Afropolitan”, which aims at capturing the experiences of diasporic subjects. Africa, as a continent experiencing steady economic growth and the rise of a middle class, demands new perspectives.
This two-day conference will take place on Friday, April 1st at the College of New Rochelle and Saturday, April 2, 2016 at Manhattanville College. We invite papers on this emerging vision of Africa and re-writing of Western views of Africa and the African diaspora. Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to Professor Nahed Noureddine at nnoureddine@cnr.edu no later than December 1, 2015.
Languages of the Conference: English and French.
Continuer la lecture de CFP: Word, Image, and Power in Africa and the African Diaspora
11ème Conférence de la Société Internationale pour les Littératures Orales d’Afrique (ISOLA)LA DATE LIMITE de réception des communications est le 15 décembre 2015. Les propositions acceptées seront communiquées aux auteurs entre fin novembre 2015 et le 31 décembre 2015, au plus tard. Pour de plus amples informations – frais d’inscription, adhésion, transport, hébergement, et toutes autres mises à jour – prière de visiter notre site web : www.africaisola.org. En accord avec le règlement de ISOLA, tous les auteurs de communications devront payer les frais d’adhésion à l’organisation pour l’année de la conférence. Les frais d’adhésion sont distincts des frais de participation à la conférence.
Site web : www.africaisola.org
Pour sa 11ème conférence biennale qui se tiendra à l’Université de Floride dans la ville de Gainesville, aux Etats Unis, la Société Internationale pour les Littératures Orales d’Afrique (ISOLA) lance cet appel à contributions pour des articles et des panels portant sur le thème « Mémoire et souvenir en Afrique et dans la diaspora. »
Pour cette conférence, nous considérons la mémoire comme un acte créatif de recouvrement. Sans la faculté de se souvenir, nous ne serions pas capables d’apprendre, de produire, ou de nous perpétuer socialement. Quand nous nous souvenons d’un événement, nous ne nous en souvenons pas dans les conditions exactes dans lesquelles cet événement s’est produit. Dès lors, la mémoire humaine n’est pas un appareil d’enregistrement qui codifie et reproduit exactement nos
expériences passées. Le contenu de la mémoire humaine est en constante évolution. Le souvenir est une dynamique inventive. Les travaux des spécialistes en psychologie cognitive confirment le
fait que l’action de se souvenir du passé est dynamique ; c’est un processus en mutation, qui dépend aussi bien des notions du futur que des images du passé. Il est évident que nous nous souvenons d’un certain événement individuellement. Cela signifie que deux individus peuvent ne pas partager des souvenirs identiques d’une situation à laquelle ils ont tous deux participé.
Continuer la lecture de AAC : Mémoire et souvenir en Afrique et dans la diaspora
Discussion published by Abimbola Adelakun on Friday, August 7, 2015
Your network editor has reposted this from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.
Creativity, Culture and Identity in Africa and the African Diaspora
Africa Conference 2016
University of Texas, Austin
March 24-27, 2016
Closely allied to the idea of genius, the discourse of creativity has privileged the individual subject whose Promethean determination, originality, and passion bring into being art, innovation, and excellence. This humanist understanding of creativity still has considerable currency in disciplines such as literature and the arts, psychology, mathematics and the sciences. Related accounts of creativity and the imagination have emerged in numerous other areas, including business, popular psychology, the social sciences, and engineering and technology. The discourse of creativity that surfaces within multiple fields reveals that the notion of the individual creator is not simply widespread, but omnipresent; indeed, it is a fundamental ideology of Western culture.
Challenging the individualist and depoliticized ideology of creativity, the conference calls for papers that present alternative accounts of the social and political dimensions of creativity as they relate to invention, technology, work, artistic and cultural production, the body, desire, pedagogy and social change. The conference aims to reach a multidisciplinary academic audience; artists and grassroots activists; the political, journalistic, and information technology communities, and interested members of the general public. The conference promises to create a provocative space for comparative critical dialogue between scholars and dancers, actors and writers, songwriters and singers. The conference invites papers on all aspects of creativity, identity and culture from the artistic to the scientific, to business and the humanistic. Scholars in all disciplines are invited to propose papers on various aspects, including but not limited to any of the following:
We expect papers that inform new ways of thinking while engaging critical perspectives. Selected papers will be published in book form. Joint panels are welcome. For this year, we welcome presentations that seek to demonstrate theoretical paradigms through the medium of performance. Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend, present papers and interact with senior scholars to build their own growth process as scholars. This conference encourages interaction between scholars across disciplines, locations and special interests. Ample time will be provided for interactivity between participants.
The deadline for submitting paper proposals is November 30, 2015. Proposals should include a 250-word abstract and title, as well as the author’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and institutional affiliation.
Please submit all abstracts to africaconference2016@gmail.com
A mandatory non-refundable registration fee of $150 for scholars and $100 for graduate students must be paid immediately upon the acceptance of the abstract. This conference fee includes admission to the panels, workshops, and special events, as well as transportation to and from the conference from the hotel, breakfast for three days, dinner on Friday night, lunch on Saturday, and a banquet on Saturday evening. All participants must raise the funding to attend the conference, including registration fee, transportation and accommodation. The conference does not provide any form of sponsorship or financial support. The University of Texas at Austin does not provide participants with any form of funding support, travel expenses, or boarding expenses.
Convened by: Professor Toyin Falola, toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu
Coordinated by: Abimbola Adelakun & Daniel Jean-Jacques, africaconference2016@gmail.com
HOWARD UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF WORLD LANGUAGES AND CULTURES
CALL FOR PAPERS
International Conference
Pan-Africanism and Negritude: Dialogues between Africa and the African Diaspora (Past, Present, Future)
Howard University
Blackburn Center
Washington, DC
November 4-6, 2015
Deadline to Submit Proposals: July 15, 2015
Extended Deadline: July 30, 2015
In its resolution 68/237 of 23 December 2013, the General Assembly of the United Nations (U.N.) proclaimed the International Decade for People of African Descent commencing 1 January 2015 and ending on 31 December 2024. The decade aims to strengthen the economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights of people of African descent, and adopt national, regional and international legal frameworks in accordance with the Durban Declaration on the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination, and to ensure their full and effective implementation.
In this context, a second International Conference, “Pan-Africanism and Negritude: Dialogues between Africa and the African Diaspora (Past, Present, Future)” (November 4-6, 2015) is being organized at Howard University to lead the forthcoming global activities regarding the U.N. recommendations and objectives. The first academic meeting at Howard University was an echo of the International Year for People of African descent proclaimed also by the U.N. in 2011.
The organization of this International Conference is intended to contribute not only to the reconstruction of the bond between Africans and African Diaspora, but also to the defragmentation of the memory of the scattered Africa and Africans caused by the slavery, colonization and (im)migration. Because, although an early Pan-Africanism and Negritude had strongly advocated for the pride of the cultural heritage, history, unity and empowerment of Africans and African Diaspora; although the music (i.e. jazz, blues, reggae, rumba, salsa, hip hop, rap, etc.), the language (creole, palenquero, etc.), the religion (vaudou, candomblé, santería, etc.), the food (malanga, fufu, gombo, etc.) and the (im)migration are today critical factors of relations between Africans and African Diaspora, many adverse challenges continue to pave the ways of their unity and empowerment.
Participants of all continents and all disciplines are encouraged to submit their proposals and foster in general the reflections –but not limited to- on what critical role the early Pan-Africanism, Negritude and Negrismo played on the dialogues between Africans and African Diaspora and on their empowerment; how to (re)negotiate both, the reconstruction of the scattered identities and the defragmentation of memories, and how to enhance unity and empowerment today; finally, what visions and key elements can be recommended to overcome the actual challenges and what mechanisms to realize such a recommendations. Academics, scholars, graduate students, journalists, fiction and non-fiction authors/writers, playwrights, filmmakers, educators, translators and interpreters, artists, publishers, community and movement leaders, civil right activists, NGO’s leaders, youth, etc. are, therefore, invited to submit individual paper, panel, roundtable, workshop, play, film screening and discussion, etc. At the end of the International Conference, the Scientific Committee will edit and publish a book of selected proceedings.
