Home › Calls for & opportunities › Call for Papers: Emergent Discourses on African Literature (Deadline 12 May 2015)

Call for Papers: Emergent Discourses on African Literature (Deadline 12 May 2015)

By Africa in Words on 7 May , 2015 • ( 0 )

Emergent Discourses on African Literature at Africa Writes

Friday 3 July 2015, 2:00-3:30PM, British Library

Africa Writes invites PhD students and early career researchers to present and discuss new research on African literatures.

Africa Writes is an annual festival organised by the Royal African Society, which aims to promote contemporary African writing and writers as well as to explore Africa’s long literary past and its future.

Academic discourse on African literatures is characterised by a continuous process of debate, reassessment of theories and redefinition of terms. The very concept of ‘African literature’ is a problematic one because it conveys a certain homogeneity, ignoring the wide diversity of written and oral literature stemming from the continent and the diaspora. By bringing together a range of exciting new scholarship, this session hosted at the British Library aims to open up the ideas of and approaches to ‘African literature’ represented at the festival.

Chaired by Carli Coetzee (Editor, Journal of African Cultural Studies), the panel will feature 7-8 short presentations (no longer than 10 minutes) that reflect new research across diverse areas of these fields of study. We are particularly keen to showcase work that explores African literature with a long historical view and in African languages, as well as present-day African narratives and contributions that reflect on the changing landscape of the publishing industry.