The 34th Annual African Literature Association Conference
April 22 - 27, 2008

Call For Papers - Program Committee

Urban Identities in African Literature and Film
In what ways are urban identities represented in African literature and film? What voices are silenced?
Global Africa
The Role of Africa in Organizing Global Circulation of Ideas, People, Literature, and Media
Is Africa Post-Colonial?
In what ways do postcolonial theories illuminate contemporary African literature and film? In what ways is it a limited framework?
Africa and its Diaspora
How are the literary and cultural productions of its Diaspora informed by Africa?
Citizenship, Culture, and Cosmopolitanism
In what ways are African writers and/or filmmakers representing issues of nationalism and migration?
Arab Identities in African Literature and Film
How are Arab identities represented in African cultural production?
Marxist Theories and African Literature and Film
What is the relevance of Marx in contemporary cultural productions?
Questions of Indigenization
How are South Asian identities represented in African literature?
Reading African Writers
In what ways do African writers depict gender and sexuality?
Things Fall Apart 50 Years Later
Is Chinua Achebe’s groundbreaking novel still relevant?

Sembene Panel on Feminism: African Women in Sembene's Visual Imaginings

Ousmane Sembene, the acknowledged father of African cinema, uses literary and cinematic arts to raise controversial issues about inherited power and privilege in neocolonial African. His films might be called visual imaginings which interrogate and often re-situate the power paradigms of gender and tradition and call upon his audience to reassess the role of the African woman in the restructuring and transformation of the contemporary African state. This panel seeks proposals that address the many faces of African feminism in Sembene’s literature and films. Please send 200-word abstracts to Prof. Joyce Hope Scott, Jscott@wheelock.edu

“‘African’ ‘Metatexts’”

Allison Crumly and Emad Mirmotahari
Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles

The modern novel, according to one influential axiom, is one that is self-conscious. This is to say that the modern novel is aware of its own“literary” properties, the conditions of its production, and the frameworks that it inhabits and that govern it. This panel invites papers that explore this definition in the context of “African” literary production. This is especially a fruitful task in light of the prevalent tendency to read African literary production as a cultural artifact and political document.

The following questions (by no means exhaustive) offer possible approaches to the panel topic: How is African literary production self-conscious? How is it conscious of its discursive uses? How does African literary production thematize the very debates into which it is recruited? How, for instance, does African literary production exhibit consciousness of its own potential participation in debates about globalization, multiculturalism, multilingualism, creolization, religious encounters, re-narrations/restorations of African history, witnesses/witnessing, nationalism, cultural retention and authenticity after colonialism, urbanization, modernity, exile and the metropole, the cultural cartography of Africa, and the criteria for the “African-ness” of literature? Lastly, how does African literary production anticipate its reader and the “critic”? How does this literary production facilitate or resist said uses? We encourage the use of all genres of literature (poetry, drama, short stories, novels, as well as oral literatures, to name some) as well as various media and formats (performance, audio-visual, music pieces, etc.). One-page abtracts with brief information about the authors should be sent soonest possible to Emad Mirmotahari at river@ucla.edu

Translating African Literature/African Literature in Translation

This panel seeks to discuss the discursive significance of translation within the context of "African Literature." Rather than interrogating the pragmatics of translation itself -- how it is done, various methods of translation, etc. -- this panel seeks to bring new depths to the language question in African literature through critical analysis of the discursive transactions involved in translating African literary texts.

Within the context of globalization, there are clear and obvious benefits to writing in English, French, Italian, and Portuguese (i.e. larger audience, self-representation, financial gains), but how do these benefits change or transform when African literature is translated into these languages? In what ways are these respective benefits complicit within hegemonic, global systems of knowledge and production (i.e. capitalism)? What are the consequences of such complicity? Lacking an "original" in an indigenous language, in what ways does African literature written in global languages contest and/or collude with these systems? Conversely, how does translation, which retains the original, contest and/or collude with these systems? What forms of discursive agency are made available when writing in global languages? What forms of discursive agency are made available through translation? What kinds of knowledges are prioritized? Those interested in participating in this panel can send their abstracts to Natasha Himmelman at nhimmelman@mac.com by January 31, 2008.

Call for Papers: Black Maternity and Anti-Lynching: The Black Woman's Voice

By Professor Pat Young, WIU

Lynching, like slavery, has long been a controversial topic because it unravels the savagery and the violence committed against both enslaved and emancipated African Americans. In seeking to uncover the Black woman's voice on the brutality of lynching and its theft of African American lives, I am putting together a panel proposal for submission to the 2008 African Literature Association (ALA) conference taking place at Western Illinois University from April 22 to 27, 2008, and hereby invite conference paper abstracts for the panel. Papers should explore how female African American writers address the issue of lynching and its impingement on Black motherhood.

Please send a one-page abstract to Pat Young at p-young1@wiu.edu. The submission deadline is January 31, 2008.