African and Africana Knowledges

Call for Papers

Theme: African and Africana Knowledges
Subtitle: Past Representations, Current Discourses, Future Communities
Type: 3rd ASAA Biennial Conference
Institution: African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA)
  United States International University-Africa
Location: Nairobi (Kenya)
Date: 24.–26.10.2019
Deadline: 15.5.2019

The theme of ASAA’s 3rd Biennial Conference 2019 is 'African and
Africana Knowledges: Past Representations, Current Discourses, Future
Communities. The conference will be held for the first time in East
Africa at the United States International University-Africa in
Nairobi, Kenya, from October 24-26, 2019.

The aim of this year’s conference is to invite and initiate a
scholarly stocktaking of the knowledge produced by Africans in Africa
and the Diaspora in various forms — from scholarly work to artistic
expressions — and to examine representations and current African
realities and emerging futures with African knowledges. In other
words, by stocktaking accomplishments and challenges facing African
peoples globally, we hope to address the ideological basis of the
current disproportions in the distribution of worth, power and
wellbeing affecting Africans and diasporic Africans.

Although Africa has contributed more human and material resources to
global welfare, it is ironic that it continues to be regarded as the
poorest continent intellectually and materially. Besides, the
‘African condition’ today is a result of those past representations
and the production of a knowledge that still represents Africa in
popular media and scholarship as hopeless, poor, dark and devoid of
knowledge. Obviously, the multifaceted crises facing contemporary
African societies are rooted in and stem from old structures of
knowledge production. As a result, a disconnect has ensued between
academic knowledge, often produced from an outsider’s vantage point,
and African lived realities.

As academic debates intensify about the possibility of producing
theoretical knowledge with bearings on transformational praxes in
Africa, it is an important time to rediscover and benefit from the
Afrocentric canon and kinship between African and Africana Studies.
These two different perspectives on African ontologies have been
pitted against each other — separated by historical, political,
geographical, and economic trajectories as if they were competing
disciplines, and yet they complement each other. It is ASAA’s hope
that this politically-motivated dichotomy introduced between African
and Africana studies can be overcome.

To this end, and against existing hegemonic discourses, this
conference invites scholars, artists and activists to look at old
representations, Afrocentric counternarratives, and the futures that
Africans and Africans in the Diaspora imagine and want for
themselves. With a view to contributing toward the canonization of
new perspectives emerging from both African and Africana scholarship,
we invite interdisciplinary scholarship using empirical, theoretical
and methodological approaches, including those highlighting African
emancipatory traditions. It is an opportune time to critically
challenge both dominant discourses on Africa and the inherited
structures of knowledge production that still constrain our African
imaginations.

The ASAA executive committee and the local organising committee
welcome the submission of paper and panel proposals addressing the
theme: African and Africana Knowledges: Past Representations, Current
Discourses, Future Communities under the following subthemes. The
list is not exhaustive and the conference co-chairs welcome other
proposals.

Subthemes

- The politics of knowledge production on Africa
- Reuniting Africana and African knowledges
- Celebrating and canonizing African and African Diaspora Thinkers
- Decolonizing pedagogy in education in Africa and diasporas
- Higher education in Africa
- Emerging digital counternarratives on Africa
- African agency and perspectives in international relations
- The politics of museums and African artifacts restitution
- Pan-African consciousness and identity production
- Belonging: Space, race, and culture
- Africa’s historiographies and Africa’s intellectual histories
- African philosophy and theology
- Sex, queer and African sexualities
- African and black masculinities and feminisms
- African anthropocenae
- Invention and science in Africa
- Security, conflicts and African resolution perspectives
- Development and development politics in Africa
- Ethnomusicology and African music performance
- Afrocentric perspectives and indigenous knowledge systems in the
 disciplines
- African languages and emerging languages
- African cinema and film
- African democracies

The conference will present distinguished African/a and Africanist
keynote speakers, award-winning films, inspirational performances and
the opportunity to join pre-conference workshops.


Key Dates

Individual paper submission closes:
May 15, 2019

Panel submission closes:
May 30, 2019

Notice of acceptance:
July 15, 2019

Online registration opens:
March 8, 2019

Early bird registration closes:
July 15, 2019

Online Registration closes:
August 30, 2019


Conference website:
http://www.as-aa.org/index.php/asaa-2019-conference/