CFP: Life histories of African slaves

By Nara Improta on 6 August , 2012 • ( 0 )

Over the last five years, Alice Bellagamba, Carolyn Brown, Sandra Greene
and Martin Klein have been involved in a project to find and publish
African sources on the history of slavery and the slave trade within
Africa. The most recent was a conference in Berlin that dealt with work
and life cycle. We are in the process of publishing documents and papers
that have emerged from these conferences. One of our central concerns has
been to understand the lived experience of slaves in Africa and in the
slave trade out of Africa. To that end, three of us would like to push
further in one area, the quest for life histories of African slaves.

Some
recent work has been done in this area by Paul Lovejoy and various
collaborators, by Michael Larue and by Eve Troutt Powell. Are there more
life histories out there? We think so. If so, we would like to organize
panels at the biannual meeting of Africa-Europe Group of Interdisciplinary
Studies (AEGIS) in Lisbon 26-28 June 2013 and at the African Studies
Association Meeting in Baltimore 21-24 November 2013.
Our goal would be to eventually publish a book of such narratives. These
life histories can be biographical or autobiographical.

Interested persons should submit titles and abstracts to
martin.klein@utoronto.ca <mailto:martin.klein@utoronto.ca> or
alicebellagamba@yahoo.it <mailto:alicebellagamba@yahoo.it> or
seg6@cornell.edu.Please indicate which conference you wish to participate
in. We need proposals for the AEGIS meeting by October 10.
The ASA programme deadline will be much later. We have no funds to
underwrite travel.

Alice Bellagamba, Sandra Greene and Martin Klein