Summary Call African Literary Criticism Online. Discussions about the emergence of online criticism as a site for understanding knowledge production in/about Africa. Send 250 word abstracts and a one-page CV before March 15 to Naminata Diabate, nd326@cornell.edu with ‘MLA PANEL” in subject line. Expanded Call The Africa since 1990 Forum of the MLA invites submission of abstracts for a guaranteed panel titled “African Literary Criticism Online” at the 2019 Annual Convention in Chicago. “It’s gotta be digital. And that’s the next thing. The moment when people will be consuming their school texts on a digital device will be a big moment for us--as a generation, our things will be read” predicted in 2011 Binyavanga Wainaina. Although not all textbooks are accessed on a digital device, texts by the new generation of African writers are being read, reviewed, and even criticized online. The rise and development of African literatures on digital platforms (blogs, e-magazines, social media, and the Internet) is accompanied by the emergence of African literary Internet. Contributing to the renaissance of African literary practices, these platforms include, among others, Saraba, Enkare Review, Brittle Paper, Okadabooks, the Jalada Collective, Iqra, StoryMoja, LibHub, Afrikult, James Murua’s literature blog, Chimurenga, and Sunshine. Unquestionably the list is getting longer by the day. As these online platforms generate new reading publics, network existing ones, foster a sense of immediacy, they also create celebrities, canonize texts, and invigorate less formalized genres. Despite their welcome presence, literary criticism online suffers many setbacks, including but not limited to an ephemeral life span, an informal and unstructured dynamic, a questionable quality, and the constantly fragile boundaries between criticism and the search for fame. In expanding the ongoing academic conversations on the life of this literary culture, this panel seeks to examine the extent to which African literary Internet reconfigures conventional sites, methods, and theories of literary criticism. Prospective panelists should submit a 250-word abstract to Naminata Diabate (nd326@cornell.edu) by March 15, 2018 with “MLA Panel” in subject line. We welcome papers addressing the following questions among others: How might we either theorize or critique online literary criticism by exploring practices from and about Africa? To what extent is the interaction between authors, readers, and critics shaping new African writing and by extension African literary studies? To what extent do these platforms shape the future of criticism as an academic exercise? How might we define and conceptualize the ways in which academic literary criticism can guide digital literary culture’s compelling tendencies evolve and thrive? How does online literary criticism put pressure on concepts such as authorship, publishing, criticism, academia, and journalism? How might we write the history of African literary Internet? How might we conceptualize the political and...

Please find below the call for panels and papers for the Thematic Stream on Autobiography in Africa for the ASA-UK to be held in September 2018. We would be most honoured if you could send in a proposal for a panel or a paper for this occasion before the deadline of 16 February 2018. Within this Thematic Stream I will organise a Panel on Detention and Autobiographical Writing. (See call for papers, also below.) If you want to submit an abstract on that subject, you may contact me directly (preferably before 6 February 2018). But feel free to submit a paper proposal on another theme related to autobiographical narrative (use the option 'open panel' in your registration): Godwin, Tom and I will come up with panel proposals for these abstracts. Thank you in advance and looking forward to receiving your proposal. Met vriendelijke groet / With kind regards, Inge Brinkman   Conference Stream Text, paratext and context in African autobiographical narratives. At the CONFERENCE: ASA-UK 11-13 September 2018, Birmingham You can now submit your panel and/or paper for the thematic stream on autobiography in Africa. Submit through: Call for Papers and Panels ASAUK 2018: NOW OPEN Please note: deadline for the proposal: 16 February 2018 Abstract Always straddling and dismantling the boundaries between truthfulness and imagination, between memory, concealment and referentiality, between psychology, history, geography and literature, autobiographical narrative invites the audience to (re-)consider the relations between text and context, or text and co-texts. In its counterdiscursive capacity, postcolonial autobiographical narrative has been especially emphatic in this respect: its critical constellation in the end rests on reference to political practices and hierarchies beyond the text, weaving palimpsestic layers of (counter-)meanings. In this light it is not surprising that many African autobiographers have stressed the importance of realism for their work, and they and their publishers often employ various strategies – in the text, but also in paratextual elements – to enhance the effect of realism as the starting point of meaning-making. Meanwhile, discussions on African autobiographical narrative have over the last decades expanded to include oral genres, life histories, auto-ethnographies, online blogs and Facebook pages, apart from the more classic form of a published book. This begs the question how relations between text and context are established in these more recent forms of autobiography. In this thematic stream we will focus on text, paratext and context in autobiographical narratives from Africa. We welcome paper proposals that deal with African autobiographical narrative in whatever form – published, online, oral –, and in principle from any discipline or from an interdisciplinary perspective. See also: STREAM: Text, paratext and context in African autobiographical narratives. We regret to note that no financial support...

The Department of Pan-African Studies Kent State University presents its Fourth Biennial Africa and the Global Atlantic World Conference “Intersectional Approaches to Survival: Legacies of Resistance” April 12-13, 2018 Keynote Speaker: Professor Linda James Myers The Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University will hold its fourth biennial Africa and the Global Atlantic World Conference on April 12th and 13th, 2018. This year’s conference focuses on intersectionalities between approaches to resistance that various communities have historically deployed to confront systemic forms of dominance. At a time when wellness, health, clean environment, and sustainability are as threatened as economic and gender equality, disadvantaged communities of color find themselves uniquely periled by detrimental public policies and social attitudes. In such perilous moments, it becomes imperative to examine the ways in which freedom struggles in the Pan-African world are intersectional with other liberation struggles in which similar and different strategies and legacies of resistance exist. Knowing that resistance and survival often require broad coalitions of experiences among diverse groups, this conference wants to draw on the creative ways in which such approaches have or have not been successful in addressing the predicament of people of African descent. Relying on the insights of both activists and scholars, this conference hopes to encourage crucial exchanges on how various communities choose to resist oppression. In honoring creative approaches to survival and resistance this year's conference will run concurrently with our annual Pan-African Festival, which will take place on April 12-14. The festival activities will include free health and wellness workshops, art exhibitions, live performances, a Black Playwrights Showcase and a Pan-African Vendors Marketplace. This year’s Keynote Speaker will be Professor Linda James Myers, Director of the AAAS Community Extension Center, College of Arts and Sciences, and Faculty of the Department of African American and African Studies at Ohio State University. Professor Myers specializes in psychology and culture; moral and spiritual identity development; healing practices and psychotherapeutic processes; and, intersections of race, gender and class. Internationally known for her work in the development of a theory of Optimal Psychology, Dr. Myers has conducted lectures and trainings in England, South Africa, Ghana and Jamaica. She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and five books, including: Understanding an Afrocentric World View: Introduction to a Optimal Psychology; and, most recently, co-editor of Recentering Culture and Knowledge in Conflict Resolution Practice. Dr. Myers’ oneness model of human functioning offers a transdisciplinary focus that builds on insights from the wisdom tradition of African deep thought, and converges with modern physics and Eastern philosophies. Topics and themes of papers/artistic work will include: Legacies of resistance and survival Environmental racism The Detroit water issue Health and wellness Food deserts Barack...

Rose Sackeyfio Ph. D. In the 21st Century, female authors have moved beyond the margins of male- authored texts to command new spaces of prominence in the African literary canon. African women’s creative artistry has garnered critical acclaim through distinguished awards, best-selling fiction and penetrating insight into women’s experiences. Many contemporary women writers share the distinction of living in the west, which confers education and new and expanded opportunities along with paradoxical realities of otherness. The late Buchi Emecheta is an iconic woman writer whose early works chronicle the transformative nature of African diaspora life through a gendered lens. Emecheta’s autobiographical accounts of her life in London are vividly captured in her novels In the Ditch (1972) and Second Class Citizen (1974). As an important forerunner of African women’s writing, her legacy resonates in the literary expression of an entire generation of accomplished and successful women writers from Africa in the global age. A central theme in the literary imagination of female artists is thematic perspectives on the fluid and shifting constructions of African women’s identity in the international arena. The new emphasis on contemporary themes of transnational identity is a compelling subject of debate as scholars and critics of African literature interrogate issues of authenticity, audience, language and market driven forces beyond Africa’s borders. Among the constellation of talented writers are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Chika Unigwe. Aminata Forna, Bernadette Evaristo, Taiye Selasie, Nnedi Okorafor, Jay Bernard, Warsan Shire, Unoma Azuah, No Violet Bulawayo, Yaa Gyasi, Imbola Mbue, and Yaba Badoe among others. The essays in this volume will explore a range of themes on all aspects of African women’s writing from the diaspora. Questions to consider are: How does the intersection of race, class and gender influence the identity and status of African women living in the diaspora? How are feminist themes explored in African women’s writing outside Africa? What is the relationship between African migrant women and African diaspora populations dispersed through enslavement? How do African women writers explore connections and perceptions of Africa as homespace? How do women writers project the image of African women in fictional works? How do African female authors interrogate the tensions between African cultural traditions and modernity in western settings? How do African women writers (re) imagine African futures? How do writers depict African women and sexuality? How do the experiences of African women in the diaspora intersect with females from other diaspora communities? Topics may explore timely and crucial issues that shape the lives of African women beyond Africa’s borders. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following sub-themes: Sub-Themes • Hybridity • Race • Class • Migration • Urbanization • Sexual violence • Women trafficking...

On Whose Terms? Ten Years On Final Call For Papers; 1 Dec 2017 On Whose Terms? Ten Years On… (in Critical Negotiations in Black British Literature and the Arts) Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. March 22nd-23rd 2018 The cultural power of Black British* literature and the Arts resides as much in the exploration of pressing cultural concerns, as in its innovative material aesthetics and textual practices. The 2008 landmark conference ‘On Whose Terms?: Critical Negotiations in Black British Literature and the Arts’ focused upon local, international and transnational engagements with Black British literature and the Arts, to trace the multiple – real and imaginary – routes through its production, reception and cultural politics. This 2018 return conference, ‘On Whose Terms?: Ten Years On…’ aims to chart what has happened throughout the past the decade, and once again to provide a vibrant meeting opportunity for prominent and emerging scholars, writers and practitioners, young people and the general public to explore and celebrate the continued impact of this field, both at home and abroad. See the full call for papers here....

Special Issue on Post-Colonial Nostalgia - Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Deadline: November 1, 2017 Simon Lewis and Giusi Russo, guest editors of the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies are seeking manuscript submissions for a special issue on post-colonial nostalgia to be published in the spring of 2019. During the Rio Olympic Games of 2016 a conservative British MP tweeted a map of the British Empire along with the words “Empire goes for gold.” This is only one example of how recent events have prompted some in the west to recall tropes and narratives of empires with a sense of longing for a supposedly better past. The British vote in favor of “Brexit” along with the French presidential election’s debate on how to unconditionally love the French past highlighted the enduring power of imperialist discourse and the contentious politics of the ways in which empire is remembered and invoked. In some European instances similar tropes permeate the longings of the once-colonized as well as the former colonizer. The current political situation in the US has also drawn attention to the problematic nature of appeals to nostalgia by revealing how a desire to "return" to a past marked by racial and gendered hierarchies can be deployed in an effort to deny democratic progress. While referenceUs to empire in US rhetoric may be less explicit than in European cases, the past is similarly re-presented as a moment of order, of clarity, and opulence. The special issue of the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies “On post-colonial nostalgia” seeks to explore the relationship between contemporary history and the melancholy of empire, the specificities of this type of remembering, the position of who remembers vis-à-vis imperial and colonial administrations, and the modalities of remembrance. The editors will consider contributions in the humanities and social sciences that reflect on the following questions: What is it about the post-colonial present that creates the longing for empire? What is the purpose of post-colonial nostalgia and “whose nostalgia” is present in the public sphere? What is the place of violence and suppression of democracy in the personal and public memories of empires? How does nostalgia manifest itself in high/elite culture, and in popular culture, respectively? Can nostalgia ever be positive and represent resistance to present oppressive circumstances? Contributions to the Field “On Post-colonial Nostalgia” contributes to the field of colonial and post-colonial studies by analyzing the intersections between the history of empires and the history of the present. The modalities and purposes of nostalgia confirm the centrality of the relationship between empires, politics, and everyday life. Nostalgia also represents a continuum in the history of colonialism and challenges the notions of end of empires. Decolonization...