Remembrance, Renaissance, Revolution:
The Meaning of Freedom in the African World Over Time and Space

5-9th November 2019
The College of William & Mary Williamsburg, Virginia

*EXTENDED* CFP Deadline: 1 March 2019

The year 2019 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the origins of slavery in what became the United States with the arrival of approximately twenty Africans in modern-day Jamestown, Virginia in August 1619. Described in English records as “twenty and odd” Negroes, these captive Africans from West-Central Africa reflected the growing intensity of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the world’s largest forced migration that connected Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Asia. This global system of migration, enslavement, and oppression was critical to the making of the modern world. Throughout the Black world, unfortunately, the emancipation of enslaved people did not result in full freedom. Moreover, decades of European worldwide colonial domination, especially within the African continent, further obstructed people of African descent in the global political economy, with a continued impact in the present day.

Africa is the birthplace of humankind, and under a multiplicity of circumstances, African descendants have dispersed and migrated to every corner of the globe. These numerous African diasporas are marked variously by (in)voluntary movement, servitude, trade, military/imperial objectives, and cultural, academic, and professional ambition. This broader understanding provides new opportunities to fully appreciate the complex histories and creative cultures of today’s many African diasporas. Despite vast differences across and within contemporary African diasporas around the globe, there remain broad commonalities of marginalization, exclusion and relative material deprivation for African-descended people in their respective societies. The contemporary world has seen a resurgence of blatant racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance directed towards the African-descended and other communities racially constructed as “others”. But despite past and present horrors, African-descended peoples across the globe have survived and thrived, remembering their pasts and re-envisioning their futures in ways that continue to lead to and strive for renaissance, freedom, and revolution in the contemporary world.

ASWAD invites panel and individual paper proposal submissions for its 10th biennial conference to be held in Williamsburg, VA (USA), November 5 to 9, 2019 on the campus of the College of William and Mary to discuss, examine, and reflect on the legacies of enslavement and the meaning(s) of freedom for people of African descent nationally and globally on the four hundredth anniversary of the origins of slavery in what became the United States. We also seek papers that interrogate the many other diasporas that began (and continue) in Africa, and continue to flourish in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South and Central America, the Caribbean and the Pacific/Indian Ocean basins. We are particularly interested in panels and papers on the conference themes of remembrance, renaissance, and revolution in the many African diasporas across time and space. However, we encourage papers from any time period and topic related to the study of the African-descended.  Continue reading →

Black Studies – Sankofa Past, Present, and Future 

12-13th April 2019
York College, City University of New York

CFP Deadline: 21 December 2018

Black Studies grew into an academic discipline in the wake of student protest at San Francisco State University in late 1968. By 1969, the wave that started in the Bay Area had spread throughout the nation’s State Colleges, Universities, and private Universities and Colleges with many creating their own Black Studies Departments. In that same year, the major Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) added their names to the list of institutions creating Black Studies departments. In the intervening years, various breakthroughs and challenges – both internal and external – marked the growth and shape of the discipline. As disinvestment in public education and higher education continues, it bears remembering why we have Black Studies and why it remains important in 21st Century America.

The New York African Studies Association wishes to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Black Studies as an academic discipline by exploring its glorious past, present, and future. We invite scholars and both graduate and undergraduate students to submit individual papers, entire panels, or creative works/performances that focus on Black Studies specifically, as well as the theory, research, methodology, teaching, and public education issues that broadly address the theme of the conference and related aspects of the Black Global experience.

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Guest Editors:
Maria Rice Bellamy, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
Karen Weingarten, Queens College, City University of New York

CFP Deadline: 1 March 2019

To inherit is to receive, to gain, to be left with more. The term “inheritance” first brings to mind the bequeathing of property by a parent to a child. The exclusion of women from this form of inheritance has been a contested issue for millennia and figured prominently in the earliest feminist causes in the United States and other Western nations. Remarkably, women in many parts of the United States won the right to own and control property (inherited or purchased, be she single, married, or divorced) before they earned the rights of citizenship, particularly the right to vote. While this call for papers begins with these most conventional understandings of inheritance, the goal of the Inheritance issue of WSQ is to facilitate a conversation on the many meanings and complications of the term “inheritance” and of the processes and experiences of inheriting, including the multiplicity of things that can be inherited and the varied ways these things can be transmitted and received across generations.

We are seeking papers that take a critical and transgressive approach to any and all aspects of inheritance, which in its most basic form involves one who bequeaths, items passed down, and one who receives. Our consideration of inheritance then questions first who has the power to decide what is worthy to be passed down and who is worthy to receive? How is this power granted, questioned, and subverted? How do people divested of this power find alternative ways of leaving a legacy? Second, what gets passed down and what gets left out of the process of inheritance? What forms of inheritance are recognized—given significance—or not? What histories or memories are remembered—preserved, passed down—or not? What inheritances are lost and how do we reckon those losses? Finally, who receives and who is excluded from inheriting? Who are the winners and losers in generational transfers? What economic and social repercussions are experienced by persons excluded from inheritance, particularly women, people of color, immigrants, people without property, and persons with disabilities? How do these losses continue to be felt over the generations? How do we reckon the immaterial losses, such as names never recorded, art never created, writing never published? Continue reading →

The Caribbean in times of Tempest. Ethnicities, Territorial Resistances and Epistemic Poetics

3rd to 7th June 2019
Santa Marta, Colombia

*EXTENDED* CFP Deadline: 15 December 2018

As if amidst a great marine storm, the Caribbean endures times of Tempest. We seem to be the target of ever-growing devastating hurricanes from the south; sacking and pillage from the extractivism of the global north; measures of austerity derived from the neoliberal agenda of the financial “north”; natural and social disasters; drug dealing; and ongoing forms of human trafficking, slavery and feminicide. Expressions of racism, patriarchy, homophobia and xenophobia worsen. In response to such times of Tempest, it is necessary to give visibility to the diversity of the Caribbean world, its ways to imagine liberation; and to think and understand its life experiences from its own narratives and arguments. In addition, to analyze and apprehend the multiple resistances that take place at the local level against policies of plunder and death. Following our Caribbean tradition, the Tempest invites us to poeticize the future, producing critical theories that allow us to think of models of society that give priority to life.

Major themes of the conference:

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Black Internationalism and New York City

2nd to 3rd May 2019
New York University

CFP Deadline: 14 January 2019

This conference seeks to promote mechanisms by which academics, activists, policymakers, and other stakeholders enter into greater dialogue and collaboration in areas of conjoined interest. In partnership with the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) – for which NYU serves as the institutional home – NYU’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD) will convene every two years, alternating with ASWAD’s biennial conference.

(ASWAD’s 10th Biennial Conference will be held from 5-10 November, 2019 at the College of William & Mary. For more information, please consult the website.)

CSAAD welcomes the participation of communities, organizations, and individuals from across the whole of Africa and its Diaspora, in seeking to foster cross-cultural and cross-spatial engagement. The CSAAD-ASWAD Medial Meeting endeavors to serve as a venue within which communities hailing from the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia might continue to explore connections and identify mutual projects.

To this end, CSAAD issues a Call-For-Proposals, from all interested parties, to participate in the CSAAD-ASWAD Medial Meeting, May 2-3, 2019, on the campus of NYU. The CSAAD-ASWAD Medial Meeting will be on a smaller scale than the biennial ASWAD gathering, and will therefore be much more selective.

We welcome scholarship and presentations on topics that may address, but are not limited to: Continue reading →

Shifting the Geography of Reason XVI: Resistance, Reparation, Renewal

6th to 8th June 2019
Brown University

CFP Deadline: 15 January 2019

Caribbean philosophy arose out of the crucible of colonialism, racism, and slavery. As such, it has never skirted social and political questions, whether practical or theoretical, about the nature of the modern Caribbean, the relationship between the Caribbean and the wider world, dynamics of global capitalism, commitments of justice, and how agents who have been subject to domination and arbitrary interference respond to their condition in order to create visions of alternative futures.

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21st to 22nd February 2019
James Madison University

CFP Deadline: 15 December 2018

The African, African American, and Diaspora Studies program at James Madison University invites proposals for its annual interdisciplinary conference, to be held on the campus of JMU in Harrisonburg, Virginia on Feb 21-22, 2019. This year’s theme is “Bodies in Motion.” Ranging across topics from the politics of migration to the aesthetics of black embodiment, from action films to political activism, the conference will bring together a group of scholars from a wide variety of overlapping and intersecting fields. We welcome proposals from scholars in all relevant disciplines at any point in their scholarly careers. Topics for 20-minute presentations or 60-minute panels could address topics such as these:  Continue reading →

30th to 31st March 2019
University of Pennsylvania

CFP Deadline: 30 November 2018

CAMRA at Penn is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the 7th Annual Screening Scholarship Media Festival which will take place on March 30-31, 2019 at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Screening Scholarship Media Festival (SSMF) provides a creative, collaborative space to explore the affordances and challenges of multimodal strategies in research and to interrogate their social implications. SSMF is a hybrid between a traditional academic conference and a film/ media festival fostering the intersection of art and science across disciplines since 2013.

Rendering Matters of Concern and Present Histories is the theme of SSMF2019, and scholars, educators, artists, activists, visual legal advocacy and digital humanities groups are welcome to participate. This year, SSMF will feature works rendering matters of concern and the present histories of indigenous people, persons under any form of detention, diasporic communities, LGTB+ collectives, and environments in conflict.

The categories for submission are:  Continue reading →

CFP Deadline:  30 September 2018

The Latin American Electronic Literature Network (litElat) opens its call for submissions for works of electronic literature from Latin America and the Caribbean to be considered for the first litElat Anthology. This anthology seeks to compile a significant corpus of electronic literature from the region and will be published during the first half of 2019.

We understand electronic literature as that which is experienced in its production and reception stages in conversation with electronic and digital technologies, including programming languages and software. This type of literature, though it frequently incorporates other artistic languages, places verbal language in a key role in the work. If you’re not sure if your work fulfills this definition, read the article “¿Qué es la literatura electrónica?”

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8th to 9th March 2019
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan

CFP Deadline:  30 September 2018

This is a call for papers for an international conference, “Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade.” The major objective of this conference is to encourage collaboration among scholars utilizing databases to document and reconstruct the lives of individuals who were part of historic slave trades. This conference will focus primarily on the enslavement and trade of people of African descent before the twentieth century, but we welcome papers from scholars studying other slave trades.  We are interested in proposals from scholars who are presenting, interpreting, coordinating, integrating and preserving data about individuals–of slave, free or other status. Databases may be in various stages of development and construction from beginning to complete.

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7th to 9th February 2019
Female Orphan School, Parramatta South Campus
Western Sydney University
Sydney, Australia

CFP Deadline:  30 September 2018

SPEAKERS:
Michael Bucknor (University of the West Indies, Mona)
Alexis Wright (University of Melbourne)
Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique)
Anna Cristina Pertierra (Western Sydney University)

The next of our biennial Australian Association for Caribbean Studies conferences will be held at Western Sydney University in conjunction with the Australian Research Council funded project Other Worlds. Our theme, ‘Caribbean Meridians’, spotlights the ways in which Caribbean worlds are made and the relations and alignments these worlds have with worlds elsewhere. AACS conferences are interdisciplinary and papers on all topics are considered, including from the natural sciences. Recent conferences have taken the themes of ‘Land and Water’ (Wollongong, 2015) and ‘Interiors’ (Canberra, 2017). For 2019 we are encouraging presenters to think about the ‘meridians’ that connect the peoples, cultures, ecologies, and histories of the Caribbean with those of other places around the globe.

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15th to 17th November 2018
Hostos Community College
City University of New York

CFP Deadline:  15 September 2018

Dedicated to poet Rhina P. Espaillat
Opening Remarks by Daisy Cocco de Filippis, President, Naugatuck Valley Community College

Keynote Speaker: Maria Harper-Marinick, Chancellor, Arizona Maricopa Community Colleges
Plenary Speaker: Dr. Marcos Charles, former President Bronx County Medical Society, retired Prof Albert Einstein College of Medicine & honorary Prof Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo

Theme: Dominicans on the Map: Heritage, Citizenship, Memory and Social Justice

Born nearly two decades ago, the Dominican Studies Association (DSA) offers its eighth biennial congress as the occasion to usher in the organization and the field of study that it was born to promote to the next level. This eighth iteration looks to examining areas of inquiry, geographies of knowledge, research questions, and critical paradigms that its founders could hardly have fathomed when they first resolved to insist that the scholarly exploration of the Dominican experience merited a place in the US academy. After some trail-blazing, DSA wishes now to serve as a platform to new generations of scholars with quests of their own, which, in a best-case scenario, they will advance by building on the accomplishments and transcending the drawbacks of their precursors, while remaining attached to the founding ideal of using the study of the Dominican experience as a forum to foster the cause of humanity. Care for humanity implies attention to social justice, diversity, and inclusion, inclusion understood not merely as the phenotypes of bodies that differ from ours but also the knowledge that those bodies have produced, all of which we need as no part of our species can believably claim sole possession of the wisdom required for our collective survival.

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CFP Deadline:  30 September 2018

Migration is one of the largest topics of our time. Its motivations and effects on the migrants and the host nations have prompted complex and fundamental discussion in much of the world in recent years. The volume we imagine takes this discussion as a backdrop and turns the readers’ attention to the complexity of migration in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. In this geographic area, migration has a long history and has always included a back and forth between different islands in response to economic and/or political problems in the homelands. Within this sociopolitical, historical, psychological, and linguistic context, we decided to examine the motivations and effects of migration by the example of the Dominican diaspora in Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland. Since the 1960s, the end of the era of the Dominican dictator Trujillo, Dominican migration increased immensely, especially to Puerto Rico and the mainland US. In particular, migration to Puerto Rico is interesting from the research perspective, as two historically and linguistically very similar groups start existing in the same geographic space. But also, the existence of Dominican migration to the US offers a wide field of inquiry.

To this end, we would like to invite you to contribute to this volume, tentatively titled: The Dominican diaspora in Puerto Rico and the U.S. The span of research is purposefully broad, in order to offer the reader as complex a picture as possible on the topic of Dominican migration. Scholars who are currently doing research on the linguistic, social, psychological, and historical effects of Dominican migration to Puerto Rico and the US are welcome to submit a 300-word abstract in English or Spanish of their original, unpublished manuscripts in both PDF and Word files to esuarezb@shepherd.edu by September 30^th, 2018.

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13th to 16th February 2019
University of the West Indies
Mona Campus, Jamaica

CFP Deadline:  30 September 2018

The University of the West Indies and Birmingham City University are delighted to announce the staging of the 6^th Global Reggae Conference under the theme Reggae Innovation and Sound System Culture II. Hosted as a premier biennial event by the Institute of Caribbean Studies and the Reggae Studies Unit inside Jamaica’s Reggae Month, this conference will engage academics within a wide field of scholastic orientations and practice. This event comes as part of larger project on music and cultural innovation and black popular culture through which both Universities have engaged in a partnership to expand scholarship and outreach through community engagement, experimentation, archive building, exhibitions, among others. Continue reading →

26th October 2018
Centre for Intergrated Caribbean Reseach
University of London
London, UK

CFP Deadline:  10 August 2018

How have Caribbean queer perspectives and Caribbean LGBTQI activism changed since Our Caribbean? What new insights and social/political realities have emerged since the publication of this groundbreaking 2008 collection of lesbian and gay writing from the Antilles? The Race in the Americas (RITA) group, in collaboration with UCL, is proud to announce an event marking the tenth anniversary of Our Caribbean.

Continue reading →