Roots, Rootlessness, and Uprooting by Rosalind Rini Larson

 

The American Folklore Society invites you to submit a proposal for its 135th Annual Meeting to be held virtually October 11-12, 2023 and in Portland, Oregon, November 1-4. The theme of the conference is Roots, Rootlessness, and Uprooting. The proposal window is March 1-31.

The 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society will bring hundreds of US and international specialists in folklore and folklife, folk narrative, popular culture, music, material culture, and related fields, to exchange work and ideas and to create and strengthen relationships and networks. 

The theme, “Roots, Rootlessness, and Uprooting,” points to historic, natural, and social processes of connection, creation, and removal. Our work, like all living things, naturally grows out of various personal and professional ecosystems, taking root in specific institutions, communities, and traditions that are themselves subject to organic processes like atrophy and entropy, erosion and abrasion. These processes of natural deterioration, as well as more intentional and violent removal, can uproot not only our work and practices but the communities we rely upon and serve. How do folklorists and culture workers respond to various change-agents, be they individuals or structures, embodied or ephemeral, natural or artificial, dramatic or subtle? Furthermore, how does one grapple with the extractive and othering histories of the field of folklore, as well as those embedded in practices of ethnography and collaboration today?

Of course, in addition to this topic, AFS encourages participants to explore the full dimensions of their scholarship regardless of subject. Prospective participants may submit proposals for papers, panels, forums, films, and diamond presentations, or to propose new presentation formats. 

AFS is committed to maintaining and improving the accessibility of our annual meeting. To support presenters who can’t travel to Portland, individual presenters and chairs of pre-organized sessions will have the opportunity to select between virtual or in-person presentation modes when they submit their proposals. Chairs may also apply to be considered for one of the limited number of hybrid slots in Portland. Registration provides access to both the fully virtual (Oct. 11-12) and in-person (Nov. 1-4) portions of the annual meeting. Virtual attendees can expect access to some Portland-based programming in the form of streamed keynotes, a limited number of hybrid sessions, and more session recordings.

You can find more information about the meeting at 2023 AFS Annual Meeting. Instructions for submitting proposals will be added when they are available.

 

Contact information:

Roz V. Rini Larson
Annual Meeting and Programs Director
812-856-2333
annualmeeting@afsnet.org
rrinilarson@afsnet.org

 

New Models of Academic Leadership, Call for Papers, December 30, 2022, Poland

 

Subject Fields: 

Social Sciences, Sociology

Thematic issue edited by dr hab. Michał Łuczewski (University of Warsaw, Two Wings Institute), prof. dr hab. Anna Giza-Poleszczuk (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Sociology), Piotr Czekierda (Two Wings Institute) and Filip Łapiński (University of Warsaw, Two Wings Institute). 

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 30 December 2022

A new sociology of leadership – is it even possible? Although sociology’s classic thinkers, such as Max Weber, Florian Znaniecki, and Robert Merton, analyzed the question of leadership, later the topic fell into disgrace and was overtaken by psychology, organizational development, and expansive leadership studies, which eventually constituted the field itself. 

In this context, it is emblematic that even important contemporary scholars like Pierpaolo Donati and Margaret Archer – who underline the importance of agency, in contradistinction to the more structural approaches of Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, and Jürgen Habermas – disapprove of the very term “leadership”, as they claim it can divert scholars’ attention from the collective to the individual.

Neglect of the theme of leadership, and its export solely to business or politics, left universities helpless in face of the managerial revolution and political polarization, which entered academia and eliminated models of leadership tailored to its needs. Just as the CEE-management field was overridden by Western crusaders of leadership, so now the university has been colonized and bureaucratized with criteria and practices foreign to its spirit and mission. This process is apparent worldwide as well as in Poland, where the former ethos of the intelligentsia is being replaced with a new managerial, capitalist spirit – without consideration of the costs.

On the other hand, new trends in social science have promising potential to cast a new, long-sought light on leadership. The new sociology of science, the sociology of social movements, the sociology of elites/the state, the sociology of ethos groups, cultural sociology, and relational sociology, which are represented by prominent scholars such as Randall Collins, Michael P. Farell, Tomasz Zarycki, Stanisław Ossowski, Barbara Czarniawska, Monika Kostera, and Elżbieta Hałas, are ripe with insights that should be tested and applied in the realm of leadership.

As a result, the crucial question inevitably appears: how can sociology apply its most important approaches and notions to leadership studies?

In this special issue of Stan Rzeczy (State of Affairs), we set out to seek new and more robust models that would enable us both to understand leadership in a sociological way and to face the growing polarization that is occurring in all spheres of life. How can we analyze the polarization at universities and elsewhere? How can polarization be addressed, and most importantly, how can we leverage polarities instead of succumbing to their destructive dynamics? How can academia, which itself is criticized for falling prey to polarization, tackle these questions? What are good examples and exemplars of such depolarizing practices? Who (and where) are the scholar-practitioners who not only acknowledge the growing divisions of the social world but also try to mend them?

We invite all scholars who are interested in our daring endeavor of approaching leadership from a sociological perspective to contribute to our upcoming issue. We want to maintain a strong practical inclination towards conclusions that could help contemporary academia (and the world) in overcoming intractable conflicts, ideological differences, and the inevitable tensions grounded in the structure of social reality.

We encourage scholars to send proposals for articles on the following topics:

• Academic leadership
• Leadership as seen by sociology’s classic thinkers
• Contemporary sociological interpretations of leadership
• Polarisation and academia
• The impact of scholar-practioners
• Visions and missions of the university
• The role of beauty, truth, and relational goods in academia
• Creativity, group-flow, friendship in academic work
• Spiritual, contemplative (self-)leadership
• Emotionally healthy academia

/// All authors interested in participating should send article proposals by 30 December 2022. After that date, the issue editors will examine the submissions and send invitations to chosen authors. Subsequently, the articles written in accordance with Author Guidelines should be submitted by the end of April 2023.

/// Abstract proposals and full articles should be sent to Filip Łapiński (sekretarz@stanrzeczy.edu.pl). In the event of questions or other inquiries concerning the journal issue, interested parties may contact the chief issue editor, Prof. Michał Łuczewski – michal.luczewski@twowings.pl.

/// Language

English

Contact Info: 

Filip Łapiński - Editorial Assistant

Email: sekretarz@stanrzeczy.edu.pl

Contact Email: 

sekretarz@stanrzeczy.edu.pl

URL: 

https://www.stanrzeczy.edu.pl/index.php/srz/announcement/view/8

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Message from a proud sponsor of H-Net:

In/di/visible: Social Responsibility in the Age of Entropocene, Call for Papers, March 29, 2023 to March 31, 2023, Poland

 

 

Subject Fields: 

Human Rights, Journalism and Media Studies, Philosophy, Diplomacy and International Relations, Anthropology

We are more than individuals. We are more than professionals, researchers, teachers, designers or artists. Living in societies, we create them the same way they create us. Our world is indivisible regarding all the processes shaping contemporary ideas, trends and behaviours. The same applies to global problems. Human rights abuses and discrimination, migration and refugee crises, climate change, deforestation and environmental degradation, wildlife trafficking and biodiversity loss, economic crises and inequalities are all connected. If they occur in one part of the world, they have some repercussions in another one. There is interconnectedness not only between humans and humans but also between humans and the environment.

According to the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, the current geological era, marked by a significant global impact of human activity on the Earth’s ecosystem, in other words, the Anthropocene, should be understood as the Entropocene. We live in a time of ubiquitous entropy at all possible levels: physical, biological, informational and psycho-social. Human activities and techno-economic production and consumption processes have resulted in the disturbance of various systems – disturbance of climate and nature systems, the disappearance of languages and cultures, and the over-exploitation of resources and human force. Our world today is in a state of social, political and economic entropy, requiring immediate actions and strong will not only from the side of policymakers and decision-makers but also from each of us. Therefore, the indivisibility of our decisions and actions could be the force in decreasing the omnipresent entropies. The question is, how can we change the ill-adapted models and re-orient our lives in order to be more responsible?

This conference intends to bring together scholars from various disciplines and sciences concerned about the current state of the world, the inaction of decision-makers, and the ignorance or passivity of individuals and whole societies. We would appreciate papers discussing new trends, transformative ideas and alternative approaches related to the question of social responsibility understood by various professionals – educators, scholars, scientists, business people, policymakers, environmentalists, designers, artists, and activists. We encourage papers addressing the following questions:

How do we understand entropy?
How can we reimagine human-environment and human-technology relations?
How can we rebuild social, economic and political relations to address planetary crises? 
How can we reconceptualize our worldviews to make them more inclusive, pluriversal and open to various cosmologies from different parts of the world? 
How can we avoid divisiveness among people from different professions and various backgrounds? 
How can we shape education and information to encourage greater responsibility?  
How can we build a more equal, just and prosperous world for all of us?

We welcome papers, proposals for workshops and posters. Please, send us: an abstract up to 300 words for a 15-minute paper, workshop or poster and information about your affiliation and a short bio (max. 300 characters).

Deadlines: abstracts: 19th December 2022;  full papers: 30th January 2023
A monograph with selected articles will be published after the conference (Spring 2023). Please send proposals to konferencja@wse.krakow.pl.

Place: Tischner European University, Al. Jana Pawła II 39a, Kraków, Poland

The conference is co-financed by the European Social Fund under the Operational Program Knowledge Education Development, non-competitive project “Enhancing the competences of academic staff and the institution’s potential in receiving people from abroad - Welcome to Poland” implemented as part of 3.3 POWER defined in the application for project co-financing No. POWR.03.03.00-00 PN14/18.

Contact Info: 

Organizing committee:

Marta Błaszkowska-Nawrocka, PhD

Monika Różalska, PhD

Anna Treska-Siwoń, PhD

Ziemowit Kościelny, MA

Contact Email: 

konferencja@wse.krakow.pl

URL: 

https://wse.krakow.pl/indivisible/

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We will consider any proposals submitted that relate to folklore and will try to form panels and / or roundtables from these submissions.

 

RE: SEEFA Proposal Submissions for ASEEES 2023

by Dorian Juric

Dear colleagues,

 

The Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association [SEEFA], an ASEEES affiliate, is issuing an annual call for papers for the ASEEES convention to be held in Philadelphia, in-person 30 November – 3 December and online 19–20 October 2023. The theme of the conference is “Decolonization” (https://www.aseees.org/convention/2023-aseees-convention-theme).

 

Participation in our panels does not require SEEFA membership. We welcome participation not only from folklorists, but also from specialists representing all fields of study, including literature, anthropology, and history.

 

 

The ASEEES deadline for submission of panels is 15 March 2023. SEEFA will accept proposals until 17:00 EST on 1 March 2023. SEEFA will notify recipients of inclusion on a panel/roundtable by 5 March 2023.

 

If you would like to propose a paper for a SEEFA-sponsored panel, please:

 

- electronically send a title and a 150-word abstract of your proposed paper by 1 March to Dorian Jurić at <juricdb@gmail.com>. Please also designate in your email if you want to be included for in-person or virtual attendance (we will do our best to accommodate those requests but flexibility on the matter helps a great deal).

 

- update your ASEEES c.v. form (online at http://www.aseees.org/);

 

If you are willing to chair or to be a discussant for one of the panels, please also let me know by 1 March.

"Who Do We Think We Are?: Race, Ethnicity and Representation in Irish Children's & YA Literature & Culture", Call for Papers, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, 21st-22nd April 2023

 

Date: 

January 11, 2023

Location: 

Ireland {Republic}

Subject Fields: 

Childhood and Education, Humanities, Literature, Popular Culture Studies, Race Studies

Call for Papers (ISSCL)
"Who Do We Think We Are? : Race, Ethnicity and Representation in Irish Children's & YA Literature & Culture"
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, 21st-22nd April 2023
Keynote Speaker: Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold (University of Glasgow)
While race, ethnicity, and representation have been increasingly explored in international publishing, activism, and creative industries, these important areas are relatively under-studied in the Irish context and this conference aims to address this gap in Irish youth-literature research and to create a space for scholarly discussion, debate, and exchange. We invite submissions from all relevant stakeholders and disciplinary perspectives in Irish Studies and Youth-Literature Studies (e.g. academia, education, arts policy, media studies, librarianship, book history, translation) and we particularly welcome submissions from early-career researchers.

Topics might include but are not limited to: narratives of nation, Ireland, and Irishness in relation to race and ethnicity;
Irish Traveller writing and culture and representations of Irish Travellers and culture; anti-racist writing/anti-racist reading/anti-racist practices within Irish children’s and YA literature, and culture; publishing practices and movements in Irish publishing for young people e.g. sensitivity readers; post-colonialism and post-colonial readings; decolonisation and anti-racist practices in e.g. Irish curricula, Irish youth-literature scholarship, Irish youth-literature archives and collections, teaching Irish children’s and YA
literature and culture; ethnic minority authors and illustrators of children’s and YA literature and culture;
migration, asylum, refugees, and representations of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees;
religion and intersections with race and ethnicity; Irish-language publishing for young people/with young people;
Whiteness; activism in/with children’s and YA literature and culture.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words plus a brief biographical note (no more than 75 words) to isscl.committee@gmail.com by 5pm on January 11th 2023. We are investigating the feasibility of hybrid conferencing. When submitting your abstract, please indicate your preference for in-person or virtual presentation. Selected presenters from the conference will be invited to contribute an article to a special issue of The Irish Studies Review journal on race, ethnicity, and representation in Irish children’s and young adult literature and culture which will be published in May 2025.

Contact Info: 

The Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature (ISSCL) isscl.committee@gmail.com

Contact Email: 

isscl.committee@gmail.com

URL: 

https://issclblog.wordpress.com/

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Message from a proud sponsor of H-Net:

Cultural Histories of Empire, Call for Papers, December 20, 2022, Singapore

 

Subject Fields: 

British History / Studies, Classical Studies, Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Contemporary History

International Society for Cultural History
2023 annual conference
Cultural Histories of Empire, 19-22 June 2023
Singapore

Plenary speakers

-Jane Lydon, Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History, University of Western Australia

-Carlos F. Noreña, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley

Empire has been a persistent form of human organization and one of the primary mechanisms for the dispersion of cultural forms. Some of the earliest known empires include the great imperial formations in Mesopotamia in the second millennium BCE and in Persia and around the Mediterranean in the first millennium BCE. Over the past two millennia, empires have appeared in all regions of the world, including in the Americas (Tawantinsuyu), Asia (the Mughal Empire, Khmer Empire), Europe (the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Oceania (the Tu’i Tonga Empire), and Africa (the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire). They have also cut across large swaths of the planet (such as the British, Spanish, and Dutch empires). Although decolonization was a defining historical process of the twentieth century, the expansionist efforts of nation-states today suggest that empire remains a political, military, and economic strategy and a geographic and cultural ambition.

For its first conference in Asia, the International Society for Cultural History invites paper and panel proposals on the theme of “Cultural Histories of Empire.” Historians and contextually oriented scholars working on any period or location are encouraged to explore (but are by no means limited to) the following topics:
 

-imperial culture: literature, music, art, religion, sport (cricket, horse racing, rugby, etc.)
-iconographies of imperial power

-conceptual terminology in the study of empires

-forms of resistance to and subversion of imperial authority
-inter-imperial commodity chains, trade journeys
-nationalistic movements, transitions from empire to nation-state
-the embodied experiences of empire
-environmental colonialism
-everyday empire: street signs, posters, patterns of consumption
-the circulation of periodicals and imperial press systems
-leisure practices, such as reading, cooking, hiking, and feasts in imperial contexts
-performances of colonial authority: ceremonies, hearings, trials, gatherings
-popular attitudes toward empire
-imperial propaganda: Ara Pacis, literature, public monuments, film, radio, television, rhetoric (“political spin”), etc.
-travel writing (memoir, journalism, blogs, letters), adventure fiction
-informal empire

As always, we also welcome panel and paper proposals on methods and theories of cultural history; new approaches to cultural history; and the history of cultural history.

Presentations should be no more than 20 minutes in length and delivered in English: Individual paper proposals should consist of an abstract (not exceeding 300 words) and an 80-100 word bio in a single Word or PDF file. Panel proposals should include abstracts for 3-4 papers, a brief rationale that connects the papers (100-200 words), and biographies of each participant (80-100 words) in a single pdf or Word file. Please indicate if one of you will serve as panel chair. Successful panel proposals will include participants from more than one institution, and, ideally, a mix of disciplines/fields and career stages.

DEADLINE: 20 December 2022. Participants will be informed by 25 January 2023. Proposals and inquiries should be sent to isch2023@gmail.com

Those individuals whose abstracts are accepted for presentation will be expected to become members of the ISCH: http://www.culthist.net/membership/

Presenters are invited to consider submitting articles to the ISCH’s official peer-reviewed journal, Cultural History, published by the Edinburgh University Press (http://www.euppublishing.com/loi/cult) and monographs to the book series it publishes with Routledge (https://www.routledge.com/Studies-for-the-International-Society-for-Cult...)

The conference will feature a prize competition for the best paper presentation by an early career researcher (details tba).

The 2023 ISCH conference will be held in parallel with the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies’ World Congress on the theme of "Comparative Empire: Conflict, Competition, Cooperation, 1750-1914." Attendees of both events will gather for plenaries and cultural activities and have the option of participating in an array of workshops, including:

Leah Lui-Chivizhe (University of Technology, Sydney), “Decolonising Museum Collections? What’s In It for Origin Communities?”

Graham Law (Waseda University), “Global Distribution of Popular Fiction: Forms of Circulation and Circulation of Forms”

Donna Brunero (National University of Singapore), “Empire and Imperial Identity: Royal Tours and Pageantry in the Long Nineteenth Century”

Adeline Johns-Putra (Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University), “Empire, Climate, and Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century: Comparative Histories of China and ‘the West’”

Joshua L. Reid (University of Washington), “The Indigenous Pacific in the Age of Colonialism”

Maria Taroutina (Yale-NUS College), “Encounter, Race, and Representation: Painting Empire in the ‘Long’ Nineteenth Century”

You can read more about the SGNCS World Congress by visiting its website, https://www.sgncscongress.com/. For the latest ISCH conference news, visit www.ischconference2023.com. For any questions about the ISCH conference, please contact Kevin A. Morrison, program chair, at isch2023@gmail.com

Contact Info: 

Kevin A. Morrison, program chair

Contact Email: 

isch2023@gmail.com

URL: 

https://www.ischconference2023.com/

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Call for Panelists: Organized Sessions at the 7th Lagos Studies Association Conference, Call for Papers, January 1, 2023, January 1, 2023

 

 

The 7^th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference

 

Conference Theme

Rethinking Decoloniality: African Decolonization and Epistemologies in the 21^st Century

 

Format

Hybrid (In person, University of Lagos and Virtual) Date June 20-24, 2023

 

Abstract Deadline: December 1

 

Panel Organizer: Rosemary Popoola (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Can a subaltern be a celebrity? In 2020, Senegalese-born Italian TikToker Khaby Lame became a digital sensation, not by privileging dominant ways of expression through sound/voice, but by subverting them. He went against the common way of engaging the public by focusing on another mode of expression that has been marginalized in a world that privileges voice. Lame's approach reiterates a call that has emerged through the years to decenter dominant ideas and methods that marginalize, homogenize, and exhume coloniality in their preference for “conventional” methods of communication. If, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak suggests, “the subaltern cannot speak”, is it because they have other modes of expression and representation that possibly have no requirement of audibility? While sound could be significant for audible expressivity, what can we learn from sign language and other non-verbal subalternized modes of expression? In addition, Oyeronke Oyewunmi, while distinguishing between the epistemological and cultural logics of western and Yoruba social thought and practices, posits that the former is deeply steamed in visuals (physicalities), and the latter combines diverse modes for comprehending realities. Can a move from visuality, which western thought privileges, to indigenous ways of knowing and apprehension be a form of decoloniality for African celebrity studies?

This panel seeks to move beyond dominant ideas of what it means to be famous. Although within the context of fame, we heed bell hooks’ timeless call to move from the center to the margins. This panel will engage marginality and subalternity from the following viewpoints. First, it explores fame through groups, people, and professionals who support famous people. Second, it focuses on famous people outside of the hegemonic understanding of fame because they do not have all the dominant, yet problematic paraphernalia of celebrities (digital media accounts, media hypervisibility, and others). Third, it tackles topics on the fringes of fame, from disabilities, sexualities, and prison to celebrities and mental health, trolls, digital begging, and charities. Lastly, it considers the circumstances under which African celebrities, across all regions and within the hierarchy of fame, may also be subalterns.

            To participate in this panel, send a 250-word abstract and short bio to Rosemary Popoola (rpopoola@wisc.edu) by December 1, 2022.

 

References

hooks, b. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Pluto Press.

Oyěwùmí, O. (1997). The invention of women: Making an African sense of western gender discourses. University of Minnesota Press.

Spivak, G. C. (1988), Can the Subaltern Speak? in Williams, P., & Chrisman, L. (2015) ed. Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader. Routledge. p.67-110

 

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Call for Panelists

Policing Representation:  Dissent, Decoloniality, and Censorship in Kannywood

 

The 7^th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference

 

Conference Theme

Rethinking Decoloniality: African Decolonization and Epistemologies in the 21^st Century

 

Format

Hybrid (In person, University of Lagos and Virtual) Date June 20-24, 2023

 

Abstract Deadline: December 1

 

Panel Organizer: Rukayat Banjo (Bayero University)

 

In the past two or three decades, decoloniality has been pigeonholed as a poststructural knowledge system that attempts a dis/placement of conventional thinking about the unending legacies of imperialism in Africa. As a framework of analysis, propositions and perspectives on decoloniality have been the basis of many verbal and actional stances. Decoloniality also involves the performance of real or imagined normality in contested private and public spaces. Theatre, particularly the cinema, gives decoloniality the intellectual legitimacy to challenge the binary denunciation the colonizer against the colonized and the urgency to expunge the remnant of colonial memory or trauma.

The persistence of coloniality in a decolonized 21st-century Nigeria is one of the problematics of the Hausa movie industry, popularly known as Kannywood. Currently, Kannywood is one of the most regulated film industries in the world. The industry has become a “colony” where select few clerics perpetuate self-styled interpretations of Islam to suppress the “dissenting” voices of filmmakers who are rendering filmic impressions of everyday life.

This panel calls for contributions that question the relationships between performance and decoloniality in Kannywood. It is interested in the following interrelated themes, among others: religion and the conflicting landscape of morality; censorship and mediation; power and resistance; honor and dissidence; objectified bodies and sexualized moralities. The panel is also opened to filmic representations of decoloniality; cancel culture and celebrities; and Kannywood futurities.

            To participate in this session, send a 250-word abstract and short bio to Rukayat Banjo (brukaiyyah.tfs@buk.edu.ng) by December 1, 2022.

 

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Call for Panelists

Decolonizing Nollywood: Language, Accents, and Aesthetics

The 7th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference

Conference Theme

Rethinking Decoloniality: African Decolonization and Epistemologies in the 21st Century

Format

Hybrid (In person, University of Lagos and Virtual) Date June 20-24, 2023

Abstract Deadline: December 1

Panel Organizer: Olusegun Soetan (Pennsylvania State University)

What do films say about the social dynamics and cultures of their producers and places of production? Do movies reflect the ideologies of the filmmakers and national points of view? How does the way a film is put together communicate messages about the shared world views of Africans and sustain dialogic imaginations about cultural identities and the polemics of nationalism and hybrid culture? How do film styles, forms, and mode change? Is the desire to express the local while addressing the global a universal characteristic of film traditions, or is it unique to African cinema? Of what importance is indigenous language to the definition of African cinema? Like human languages, do film languages have accents?

In general, we are interested in the decolonial study of Nollywood to articulate paradigms, politics, and practices that have shaped the industry's growth via thematic preoccupation, stylistic idioms, and narrative techniques. In this panel, we want to take a provocative look at what constitutes cinematic aesthetics in the industry, the agency of indigenous languages, and the overarching idiosyncrasies of accented cinema. According to Hamid Naficy (2001), "all alternative cinemas are accented, but each is accented in certain specific ways that distinguish it" (22).

Consequently, Nollywood films are accented to the degree to which they derive their accents from the "artisanal, collective production modes, and the filmmakers' and audiences' deterritorialized locations. Lately, much of what we assume to be the preference of individual auteurs poignantly reflects the shift in the audience's reception and perception of film forms and styles, as well as engagement with more profound social and cultural milieus. Therefore, this panel seeks new ways of writing and thinking about Nollywood films, especially those that are adapted for the big screens, such as "Agesinkole (2022), Anikulapo (2022), and Ayinla (2022). How do these three films (Agesinkole, Anikulapo, and Ayinla) contextualize the decolonization of African film forms and narrative modes? How is cinematic aesthetics created and expanded in the three films? To what degree are these films accented if we agree that they are cultural materials that subsist on local artifacts and oral panegyrics?  

To participate in this panel, send a 250-word abstract and short bio to Olusegun Soetan (Olusegun@psu.edu) by December 1, 2022.

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Call for Panelists

Filmic Decoloniality? Comedy, Digital Skits, and Popular Culture in Africa

 

The 7^th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference

 

Conference Theme

Rethinking Decoloniality: African Decolonization and Epistemologies in the 21^st Century

 

Format

Hybrid (In person, University of Lagos and Virtual) Date June 20-24, 2023

 

Abstract Deadline: December 1

 

Panel Organizer: Folakemi Owolabi (National Film Institute, Jos)

 

 

This panel continues the conversation on comedy and skit-making at the session I organized at the 6^th Lagos Studies Association Conference in June 2022. Today, critics argue that skit-making has revolutionized the representation of African people, institutions, and practices from the perspective of liberalization of technology and the circumvention of the conventional path of filmmaking. Skit-making is disturbing the dominant idealization of filmmaking, directing, production, and circulation. The decolonial angle to skit-making, therefore, includes representation and the breaking of shackles of domination. But decolonization is more than a representation of “authentic” African culture or removal of remnants of imperialism to include rethinking elements of coloniality in decolonization projects.

This panel welcomes contributions that go beyond a scene-by-scene analysis of skits to include theoretically sound participation that place comedy skits within the broader social, political, and economic structures of 21^st-century Nigeria. A contribution stating that skit creation is a response to youth unemployment would be inadequate for this panel, which seeks to build new and deep discursive analysis around the lived experience of the filmmakers, their communities, and the historicity of the narratives and visualities they produce within the frames of decoloniality. Misrepresentation, cultural ordering, un-Africaness, cosmopolitanism, sexualization of women, and violence, among other critiques of comedy skits, should be framed to problematize preexisting ones while showing the new dimensions they have taken.

            To participate in this panel, send a 250-word abstract and short bio to Folakemi Owolabi (folakemiogungbe@gmail.com) by December 1, 2022.

 

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Call for Panelists

Black Europe and the African Diaspora

 

The 7^th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference

 

Conference Theme

Rethinking Decoloniality: African Decolonization and Epistemologies in the 21^st Century

 

Format

Hybrid (In person, University of Lagos and Virtual) Date June 20-24, 2023

 

Abstract Deadline: December 1, 2022

 

Panel Organizer: Chiedozie Michael Uhuegbu (Sewanee: The University of the South)

 

 

What relation does Europe have with the African continent? This question could be tackled from different angles looking back at the Berlin conference of 1884 under Otto von Bismarck—itself a historical turning point in European colonial politics. This meeting resulted in the scramble for and partition of Africa by European nations like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain. The nineteenth century saw an explosion of adventurous trading enterprises that pushed Bismarck to start a more official, state-supported form of colonialism and ultimately to the Berlin Conference. Although history shows that Africans have been traveling to Europe before the arrival of the first European powers in Africa, this advent led to the transportation, deportation, and “willful” and “forceful” migration of Africans to Europe. Colonization has long ended in Africa, but Africans still migrate to Europe due to political and socio-economic reasons. This panel looks at the categorization of Black Europe, seeking papers that discuss ideas of Blackness in Europe, European history, and the Black Diaspora. How did Europe become a diasporic home for many Africans? What is the meaning of diaspora for Africans who migrated to or were born in Europe? How did Africans start migrating to Germany? Why did they migrate? How do we conceptualize the discourse surrounding the term Blackness in relation to Europe? While the panel seeks papers that are not limited to the examination of migrants of color and “Afropeans”— a term used by Johnny Pitts to identify Europeans with African ancestors—the panel is also interested in the discussion of the origins of Black Europe, migration and settlement of Africans in Europe, and the laws that regulate citizenship. We also invite discussions focusing on Europe’s relationship with Africa in literature, history, religion, art history, or culture.

            To participate in this panel, send a 250-word abstract and short bio to Chiedozie Michael Uhuegbu (chuhuegb@sewanee.edu) by December 1, 2022.

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Call for Panelists

Of Streets and Streeters: New Horizons in African Urban Space Politics

 

The 7^th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference

 

Conference Theme

Rethinking Decoloniality: African Decolonization and Epistemologies in the 21^st Century

 

Format

Hybrid (In person, University of Lagos and Virtual) Date June 20-24, 2023

 

Abstract Deadline: December 1

 

Panel Organizer: Bankole Wright (Florida International University)

 

 

This panel seeks new ways of (re)conceptualizing African streets beyond their conventional framing as significant sites of political and economic power. It moves beyond the commonplace argument that the street is a microcosm of the broader state power that rewards, punishes, and distributes resources based on primordial, among other sentiments. It is interested in engaging with the African street from its practical, physical, and metaphoric dimensions, in time perspective, and within overlapping variables of class, race, gender, and ethnicity, among other dynamics. In intellectualizing the African street, the panel asks for innovative epistemological framings that center previously unknown actors and ideas or rethink existing ones.

To participate in this panel, send a 250-word abstract and short bio to Bankole Wright (bbank015@fiu.edu) by December 1, 2022.

 

 

 

 

Contact Info: 

US Secretariat 

The Lagos Studies Association

African and African Diaspora Studies Program

Florida International University

Modesto A Maidique Campus
Labor Center, Room 304
11200 SW 8th Street
Miami, FL 33199

Website: lagosstudies.org

Email Address: lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com

 

 

Nigeria Secretariat

The Lagos Studies Association

C\O Professor Yetunde Zaid

University of Lagos Library

P.M.B 1012

Akoka, Lagos

Nigeria

Email Address: lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com

Contact Email: 

lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com

URL: 

https://www.lagosstudies.org/

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