Arts & Culture
Call For Papers: The 22nd Annual Africa Conference
Published
7 months agoon

Theme: Technology, Culture, and African Societies
Date: March 31- April 2, 2023
Email: austinafricaconference2023@gmail.com
The 22nd Annual Africa Conference at the University of Texas at Austin calls for submissions of papers in the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and other disciplines on the kaleidoscopic presence of technology and culture in African societies. The objective of this conference is to encourage conversations rooted in the histories of the African people, with the connection of science and technology to imagine alternate realities and a liberated African future.
Culture is dynamic, and globalization has become an epoch for the constant reinvention of culture that transcends time and space. As globalization continues to spread, more people find themselves across spaces and borders, with their lives structured and oriented by connections to one or several other places. Africa’s rich history is multifaceted and complex, with multiple heritage that cut across centuries and regions. The distinctiveness of each culture is peculiar to their authentic traditional practices and identities, ranging from language to literature, music, visual art, and fashion.
In present-day Africa, globalization paves the way for technology, which has aided the growth, adaptation, and transfer of African cultures worldwide. Artificial intelligence and the web are perhaps the most increasingly emerging technologies that are radically shifting normative paradigms in Africa today. The African continent requires new approaches that respond to the sociopolitical and economic needs of African societies. These approaches will define the future for the cultural, political, economic, and social spheres and on the national, regional, and international levels as they re-imagine a new future for Africa where humanity and technology meet.
Accordingly, we invite proposals for papers, panel presentations, roundtables, and artistic works/performances that critically examine these and other related issues on African history, culture, and its intersection with technology. The conference will allow scholars from various disciplines and geographical locations to interact, exchange ideas, and receive feedback. As in previous years, participants will be drawn from around the world. Graduate students are encouraged to attend and present papers. Submitted papers will be assigned to panels based on similarities in theme, topic, discipline, or geographical focus, and selected papers will be published in a series of book volumes.
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We welcome submissions that include but are not limited to the following sub-themes and topics:
· Technology and African Historical Discourses
· Technology and African Literature
· Technology and the African Diaspora
· Cultural Dimensions in Africa and Technology
· Technology and Popular Culture
· Technology and Gender Constructions
· Technology and Environmental Security
· Culture, Urbanization, and Digital Urbanism
· Globalization, Technology, and Identity Formation
· Technology and Education
· Technology, Religions and Ritual Performance
· Technology and Performative Arts
· Visual Arts and Digital Culture
· Technology and Cinema
· Technology and African Fashion
· Technology and Health Sciences
· Cultural Practices, Indigenous Medicine, and Technology
· Technology and Linguistics
· Culture, Technology and New Media
· Technology and Postcolonial/ Postmodern Conditions
· Technology and Decoloniality
· Technology, Politics and Cultural Paradigms
· Festivals, Ceremonies and Technology
· Funeral Technology–Old and New
· Digital Economy for Africa’s Initiative
· Technology, Language, and Rhetoric
· Technology and Archival Studies
· Africa Trade and Technology
· Technology, Geography, and Natural resources
· Technology and Archaeology
· Anthropology and Africa’s Digital Revolution
· Social Mobility in the Digital Age
· Security Technology in Africa
· Technology and Peace and Conflict Resolution
Each proposal must include:
(1) Title of the work and an abstract of 200 words
(2) Name of the presenter (with the surname underlined)
(3) Mailing address
(4) Phone number
(5) Email
(6) Institutional affiliation
(7) Three to five keywords best characterize the themes and topics relevant to your submission.
Participants are expected to follow these guidelines.
Proposals for panels (3-5 presenters) must include:
(1) the title of the panel and a collective summary of 250 words on the panel’s theme, including the title of each individual’s work
(2) a 200-word abstract for each speaker’s presentation
(3) mailing addresses
(4) phone numbers
(5) email addresses
(6) institutional affiliation of each presenter.
Proposals will be accepted on the official conference website (www.utafricaconference.com) and by email: toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu (cc: austinafricaconference2023@gmail.com) from mid-August to mid-December 2022. Participants who require a visa to enter the United States must submit abstracts and register early, as it may take six months to book visa appointments. 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 in-person conference fee includes a conference t-shirt and bag, admission to the panels, workshops, special events, and transportation to and from the hotel and conference events. Registration also includes breakfast for all three days, dinner on Friday night, lunch on Saturday, a banquet with DJ and an open bar on Saturday evening, and a closing celebration on Sunday.
All participants must have funds to attend the conference, including the registration fee, transportation, and accommodation. The conference and the University of Texas at Austin do not provide any form of sponsorship or financial support. However, the Holiday Inn Austin-Town Lake will have a special rate for conference participants, and transportation between the hotel and the university is included.
*Events are subject to change in accordance with CDC guidelines and global health and safety concerns. We are currently exploring a possible hybrid model for attendees who may not be able to attend physically due to US travel restrictions. All official updates will be posted on the conference website as soon as they are available.
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If you have questions, please contact the conference coordinators via the official email. All correspondence, including submission of abstracts, panel proposals, completed papers, and all kinds of inquiries, must go through the official conference email: austinafricaconference2023@gmail.com
CONFERENCE TEAM
Organizers:
Olayombo Raji-Oyelade, olayombo.raji@utexas.ed
Victor Angbah, vangbah@utexas.edu
Convener:
Toyin Falola, toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu
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Toyin Falola, Memories Of Africa: Home And Abroad In The United States
Published
1 day agoon
March 19, 2023
By Olusegun Olopade
Toyin Falola, Memories of Africa: Home and Abroad in the United States (Atlantic Migrations and the African Diaspora) | © March 2023
Book Details
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (March 24, 2023)
Language: English
Paperback: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 1496843487
ISBN-13: 978-1496843487
Memories of Africa: Home and Abroad in the United States suggests a new lens for viewing African Diaspora studies: the experiences of African memoirists who live in the United States. The book shows how African Diaspora memoirs beautifully and grippingly depict the experiences of African migrants over time through political, social, and cultural spheres. In reading African Diaspora memoirs from the transatlantic slave trade period to the present, a reader can understand the complexity of the African migrant legacy and evolution.
Author Toyin Falola argues that memoirs are significant not only in their interpretation of events conveyed by the memoirists but also in demonstrating how interpersonal and human the stories told can be. Memoirs are powerful because they are emotionally captivating and because important themes and events circulate around a particular person (in this case, the memoirist).
Undoubtedly, a memoir is significant because it can teach anyone about a part of the human experience, even if the “facts” are not described without bias. Through this sort of narrative, the reader cannot help but enter into the memoirist’s mind and, therefore, feel more empathy for them. In doing so, the reader can “feel” what the memoirist feels and “see” what the memoirist sees as clearly as is humanly possible. In this way, the historical events and life lessons become tangible and poignantly real to the reader.
Editorial Reviews
Memories of Africa makes a significant contribution to the study of the African Diaspora, African intellectual history, to our understanding of African autobiography, and more importantly to life studies. Falola provides fresh insights that will reinvigorate the field. — Olabode Ibironke, author of Remapping African Literature.
Memories of Africa opens a new dimension to the understanding of the experiences of home, space, and place, and their interactions in African and diaspora studies. — Adetayo Alabi, author of Oral Forms of Nigerian Autobiography and Life Stories.
Toyin Falola is Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has received over thirty lifetime career awards and sixteen honorary doctorates. He has written extensively on the African Diaspora, including The African Diaspora: Slavery, Modernity, and Globalization.
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Kenyatta University Holds Toyin Falola At 70 Conference
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February 4, 2023
The Department of History, Archeology and Political Science of the Kenyatta University is set to hold a Toyin Falola at 70 Conference.
The conference with the theme “Post-Colonial Africa: Historical and Contemporary Realities” is scheduled to take place between May 10 and 12, 2023 at the Kenyatta University.
Description
Modern African economic, socio-cultural, and political realities have been considerably influenced and defined by colonialism. Colonialism created the foundation of the post-colonial. Since the start of the post-colonial and (especially) the post-cold war era, there has been increased academic interest in colonialism– both in the classic and the neo-colonial forms. There have also been considerable academic and non-academic efforts at decoloniality and decolonizing Africa. These efforts have led to studying and documenting African pre-colonial history, literature, and cultural intricacies to achieve self-determination and re-establish the African identity. It is, therefore, necessary and logically consistent with the above to study Africa’s past in relation to its present. Essentially, it is important that aside from examining the print of colonial pedagogy, methods, and philosophies, Africa is studied in the light of its actions, attempts at self-governance, and realities defined by its stakeholders.
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A considerable effort has been directed at researching, documenting, and analyzing Post-colonial Africa across different fields of the Arts and the Humanities. Through such efforts concepts such as neo-colonialism, political hegemony, economic instability, societal disillusionment, administrative lapses among others that touch on the African post-colonial condition have been explored by several researchers and academicians. However, the very basis of the evolution of knowledge and the foundation of the academic world is the consistent evaluation of knowledge, theories, and philosophies. As much as there has been enhanced scholarship around the aforementioned issues, there are still thematically important aspects of Post-Colonial Africa that are relatively unexplored or under-explored. New concepts, skepticism, and relatively new subject matters have developed with the continent’s evolution – particularly concerning socio-culture, administration, globalization, conflicts, diplomacy, and ideological paradigms. For instance, it may be important to define the extent to which pre-colonial Africa influences the post-colonial realities of its nation-states, regions, and Sub-regions, as it applies across respective fields.
Other relevant aspects of the post-colonial African reality like identity dynamics and minority politics, institutions and sub-institutions in Africa, diaspora dynamic, administrative evolution in Africa, Post-colonial gender dynamics in Africa, intercultural realities of distinct nation-states in Africa, cultural awareness, and preservation in Africa, decolonial legal education and practice, ideological politics in post-colonial African, among others. The COVID-19 pandemic presented new dynamics to interpret and understand the place of post-colonial Africa in the world in light of global power politics and diplomatic spate over the causes of COVID-19, vaccine politics, and international travel restrictions. COVID-19 highlighted the need to rethink post-colonial Africa’s readiness to respond to global challenges independently.
The Department of History, Archeology and Political Studies through the Research and Innovation Committee (DRIC) plans to host a conference that is directed at answering the conceptual questions that underline some key aspects of post-colonial Africa – as defined by the necessary contextual factors and underlining theories. The conference is expected to feature different themes and introduce concepts, arguments, and theories that are well-adjusted to current African realities.
The department also wishes to use the occasion to celebrate the 70-year life journey of Professor Toyin Falola, a world renowned Distinguished Professor of History and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Falola has dedicated his entire academic life, with over 150 titles under his name, reflecting on the African condition both in historical and contemporary terms. In March 2022, the Department hosted Professor Falola, who gave thought provoking lectures on “Decolonization of Africa Studies”. As a department, we are keen to use the conference to continue enriching our conversations around this and related themes, enhance our scholarly connections and collaborations, establish new research and publication partnerships as well as strengthen existing ones.
Sub-themes
The conference sub-themes will include but are not limited to the following:
- Decoloniality, and decolonization, as it intertwines with post-colonial studies
- Internationalization in the African region – key factors for consideration should include Pan-Africanism as examined through the lens of its basis, the status quo, and possible ways forward.
- Post-colonial economy and the role of the nation-state in establishing independent regional control
- Resource control as it affects neo-colonialistic affiliations and European hegemonic influence in Post-colonial Africa
- Liberal ideological predispositions and the socio-philosophical future of the African Nation states – with considerations to the influence of the youth demography
- Developmental politics in Post-colonial Africa
- Gender dynamics and politics in Post-colonial Africa
- Post-colonial Literature and the future of the arts in Africa
- Migration, conflicts, and peace actions in post-colonial Africa
- Regional collaboration and diplomatic politics in Post-Colonial Africa
Participation
The conference is expected to attract participation from academicians, researchers, experts and practitioners in the area of African history and other related humanities and social science disciplines. These shall be drawn from mainly Kenyan and other African institutions as well as from outside the Africa continent. The conference will allow for a blended mode where some participants will be present on-site at Kenyatta university while others will present online.
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SUBMISSION PROCEDURE
Prospective participants are encouraged to send abstracts of between 250 and 500 words, including their full contact details (title, name, address, email address and telephone number) as well as their institutional affiliation by 30th February, 2023 to: haps-research@ku.ac.ke
Final Output
Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by 5th March 2023 and asked to prepare full papers to be presented during the conference. The official language of the conference will be English. Papers presented at the conference will be peer reviewed and published in an edited volume.
Important Dates
27th January, 2023: Call for Papers/Abstracts
30th February, 2023: Deadline for Receipt of Abstracts
5th March 2023: Notification of Acceptance of Abstracts/Papers
15th April 2023: Deadline for receipt of Full papers
20th April, 2023: Registration begins
1st May, 2023: End of Registration
10th to 12 May 2023: Conference Dates
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