Call for Papers: African Places, African Spaces, University of Leeds (Deadline: 31 January)

By Africa in Words on 30 January , 2019 • ( 0 )

Last day to submit your ideas for:
‘African Places, African Spaces’
Finding Africa Seminar Series, 2019
University of Leeds

In light of contemporary concerns with decolonisation and meditations on the meaning of the continent of Africa, both within the academy and beyond, you are invited to send papers concerned with African Places, African Spaces as part of the 2019 Finding Africa seminar series hosted in collaboration with the Leeds University Centre for African Studies and Leeds School of English.

Logo courtesy of Finding Africa

For this series, the team is interested in papers that address the ways in which Africa is figured as a place and how it occupies space in global thought. This interrogation involves questions about African ontologies, epistemologies, philosophies and literatures comparatively within the continent itself, in relation to other postcolonial contexts, and in terms of its contentious relationship with ‘the West’ or ‘North’.

Proposals can also address the primary question in relation to any of the following:

What place does Africa have in global literature?
What are the material aspects of life in African cities and villages as depicted in literature?
How do explorations of these spaces inform how we view the relationship between individuals and their communities, and between the ‘local’, ‘regional’, ‘national’, ‘continental’, ‘diasporic’ and ‘global’?
How does Africa occupy discursive, cultural and material spaces?
How does Africa travel in film, journalistic, academic, literary and online spaces?
Can we think of contemporary African travel writing (e.g. Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Looking for Transwonderland, Sihle Khumalo’s Dark Continent, My Black Arse & Chibundu Onuzo’s Welcome to Lagos) as examples of reflecting on the spatiality of Africa?

The team is still accepting proposals from any discipline and especially interdisciplinary work in this area. Proposals must be a maximum of 300 words (in Word format) and submitted to findingpocoafrica@gmail.com by 31 January 2019.