African Diasporas: Old and New Conference
University of Texas at Austin
April 3-6, 2014

Panel CFP. Deadline: abstracts due 22 November 2013.

W.E.B. DuBois famously said that he didn’t give a damn for any art that was not propaganda. Just as famously James Baldwin denigrated what he considered the stock characters of the protest novel. Perceptions of propaganda and protest are in and of themselves ideological lenses that may sharpen, distort, or render invisible the range of rhetorical and imaginative strategies manipulated to inform diasporic identities. Identifying “new” formulations of diaspora at specific historical junctures means redefining the terms of social and political engagement. Through an examination of rhetorical and literary strategies in a variety of media and through a variety of discourses this panel seeks to understand how subjects imagine and enact diasporic communities in the midst of U.S. territorial occupations. We take as a point of departure the “new” diaspora created through primarily military invasions in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries beyond the contiguous U.S., with a particular focus on the Caribbean and Latin America.

Proposals should include a 250-word abstract and title, as well as the author’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and institutional affiliation.

Send all proposals to Kimberly J. Banks at kbanks@qcc.cuny.edu by 22 November 2013.

CFP adapted from email from panel organizer. Contact Kimberly J. Banks for further information.