Call for Papers: Lagos Studies Association Conference, 2020 (Deadline: 30 November)

By Africa in Words on 18 September , 2019 • ( 1 )

The 5^th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference
Theme: Postcolonial African Cities at 60: Continuities and Discontinuities
June 25-27, 2020
Lagos, Nigeria

The postcolonial African city defies easy definition, even as African countries enter their 6^th decade of independence in 2020.

The 5^th edition of the annual Lagos Studies Association (LSA) conference seeks to place the postcolonial at the center the African city, and ask how the concept shapes our framing of African urban locations in their physical, imaginative, spatial, and theoretical dimensions. The organizers seek to move beyond the simplistic dialectic that the city is either a measure of development or decay in postcolonial Africa; instead, they would like to engage provocative ideas about people, institutions, narratives, and practices that make each urban location unique, without ignoring the shared histories and experiences of African cities.

What is postcolonial about African cities since the 1960s? How have African cities evolved from their colonial past? Is there any correlation between decolonization on the one hand, and urban governance, artistic expressions, identity formations, and countless of other manifestations of daily existence, on the other? Why might the city form the basis of intellectual engagements within the expansive narratives of postcolonial state and nation-building? In what ways can the rhetoric of political, cultural, or epistemological decolonization improve our knowledge of African cities? How are cities that emerged since the 1960s different or similar to those with roots in precolonial and colonial eras? Did the postcolonial state engender a unique type of city or urbanization process?

LSA welcomes abstracts from academic and nonacademic practitioners working on any African urban location and across the following fields and themes, among others:

African feminisms

African philosophies of urbanism

Afrofuturism, Afropolitanism, and temporalities

Arts, musical culture, and performance

Cinema, films, Nollywood

Cyber culture, social media, and digital representation

Decolonizing the African city

Ecocritical readings of African urbanism

Language, literature, and orality

Media, popular culture, and self-fashioning

Photography and digital imaging

Queer studies and African sexualities

Theorizing African cities

Please follow the link for a full list.

How to submit

Individual Submission: Individual proposals should include a 250-word abstract, a short bio, and email and phone contacts of presenters. Please do not submit more than one abstract. Abstracts cannot have more than two presenters. Submit your abstract here: https://bit.ly/2Zc36HV

Group Submission: Panel, round-table, and workshop proposals should comprise a 250-word summary, and email and phone contacts of all panelists. Please email panel proposals to LSA at lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com

Submission Deadline: November 30, 2019. Notification of acceptance of abstracts by December 15, 2019.

Registration Fee: Local (N10,000); International ($100).

If you have any questions about the conference, contact LSA at: lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com

More information is available here: https://lagosstudies.wcu.edu/
Follow LSA on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/205111409881162/
And, on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/LagosStudies