Call for papers: Africa and blackness in world literature and visual arts
35th Annual Conference
April 15-19, 2009
University of Vermont
Second call for panels, roundtables, and papers
General Theme: Africa and Blackness in World Literature and Visual Arts
The past two ALA conferences focused on various ways African and African Diaspora literature has functioned as a cultural catalyst that nurtures black people's subjectivity in the age of globalization. As a conclusion to the series, the 35th Annual ALA Conference will focus on the ways creative writers and artists from other cultural traditions imagined Africa and blackness in the past as well as the extent to which that imagining has evolved and can be said to foster intersubjective dialogue in the age of globalization. As always, the conference will also welcome panels on other unexplored or inadequately explored aspects of African and African Diaspora literature.
Subthemes:
- Africa and Blackness in Classical Literature and Visual Arts
- Africa and Blackness in Modern Literature and Visual Arts
- Africa and Blackness in Contemporary Literature and Visual Arts
- Africa in African Immigrant Writers' Literature and Visual Arts
- Africa in African American and African Caribbean Literature and Visual Arts
- Black Artists and Reconstitution of Black People's Subjectivity
- Cosmopolitanism in African and African Diaspora Literature
- African and African Diaspora Literary Criticism and Global Cultural Dynamisms
- Postcolonialism and Postcoloniality in Relation to Africa and Blackness
- Approaches to Teaching African and African Diaspora Literature (Teacher Workshop)
- Other aspects of African and African Diaspora Literature
Plenary speakers: Wole Soyinka, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michael Echeruo, V.Y. Mudimbe, Nkashama Pius Ngandu, and Zakes Mda.
Please send a short abstract to the conveners at [email][email protected], or by mail to Lokangaka Losambe, Department of English, University of Vermont, 400 Old Mill, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. The submission and pre-registration deadline is October 30th, 2008. For information on pre-registration and ALA membership dues, please visit the 2009 ALA conference website at: http://www.uvm.edu/conferences/ALA2009