CONFERENCES & CALLS FOR PAPERS
-Paper, airwaves, screen: from text to audience in African popular culture
CALL FOR PAPERS
University of Bristol, UK
12-13 July 2017
Confirmed keynotes: Lydie Moudileno (University of Pennsylvania), Tsitsi Jaji (Duke University)
Recent artworks, including Bili Bidjocka’s Infinite Writing and François-Xavier Gbré’s National Printworks, evoke the fragile material status of writing and reading. They also remind us of the power that each can yield. In the light of development agendas pertaining to literacy (e.g. UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, as well as earlier initiatives), this conference will attend to the cultures of reading and reception that emerge in popular culture on the African continent.
The texts of African popular culture form an abundant body of textual, sonic, and visual material: from songs, magazines, romance fiction, and hip-hop lyrics, to blogs, Facebook posts, and urban inscriptions on tro-tros in Accra (Barber, 1987; 2007; Newell and Okome, 2014; Quayson, 2014). Popular culture also refers to the many ways in which these ‘texts’ are apprehended and read, at a local, national, and/or international scale (Benwell, Procter and Robinson, 2012). This area of research draws on the methods of cultural studies, material print cultures, and the sociology of reception (Charpentier, 2006). The material in question remains relatively under-studied and little-taught, however, due to issues of access and ongoing methodological debate. How can this material be researched (archives; interviews; ethnographic observation (Mbodj, 2013); digitisation; databases)? How is/might it be integrated into teaching across disciplines?
For more details, follow the following RA link
https://researchafrica.duke.edu/files/2016/12/Paper-airwaves-screen-from-text-to-audience-in-African-popular-culture.pdf.
– The latest issue of Annual Review of Islam in Africa Issue No. 12/13 • 2015-2016 ARIA @ https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.uct.ac.za_&d=CwIFAg&c=imBPVzF25OnBgGmVOlcsiEgHoG1i6YHLR0Sj_gZ4adc&r=XfmopQnygsAylZEbrBPfLWx7QWnTXZwTE-xHWohp-Is&m=yjXDHPzEV1l_LRwjS2vO8pzG5UFQsKjHJRqT65Ucx3w&s=B6yBcRnZq7aQs8seU99yVMo-EV8W7Q9vmC5RZsgZtJo&e=
Contents of the issue are available in this RA link.
https://researchafrica.duke.edu/files/2016/12/ARIA-Contents-2015-2016-Issue.pdf.
-Egypt’s Supreme Council of Culture
مؤتمر الثقافات الشعبية في أفريقيا
التفاصيل في الرابط أدناه
https://researchafrica.duke.edu/files/2016/12/الثقافات-الشعبية-في-أفريقيا.pdf
The Third International Conference on the Interactions of African Cultures:
“Popular Cultures in Africa”: April 10-12, 2017
In light of the Forum on Interactions of African Cultures’ vision of the importance of popular culture as a major component of human cultural heritage, it holds its Third International Conference under the title of ” Popular Cultures in Africa.”
The aim of the conference is to stress the role played by popular cultures in decoding components of African identities through the ages, and it ability to strengthen ties between African countries, and within societies. The Conference will also shed light on the contributions of African popular cultures to cultural heritage of African societies and that of humanity at large. Participants are therefore encouraged to consider comparative contexts inside the same African culture, between one African culture and the other, or between African cultures and other cultures outside Africa.
The languages of the conference are Arabic, English and French.
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Culture will cover costs of flight to and from Cairo, and accommodation for 4 nights during the period of the conference for accepted participants from other countries of Africa.
Read details on the conference in the two following RA links:
Part I
https://researchafrica.duke.edu/files/2016/12/Popular-culture-in-Africa.pdf.
Part II
https://researchafrica.duke.edu/files/2016/12/Cultures-of-Africa.pdf.
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NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Amagama Enkululeko!
Words for Freedom: Writing Life Under Apartheid
[ترنيمات الحرية: سجلات الحياة في عهد نظام أبارتيد ]
Compiled by Equal Education
Language: English
This anthology tackles the history of colonialism and Apartheid from the ground up. Through a blend of history and story-telling, it opens a window onto the ways ordinary, everyday life was shaped by the forces of history. It displays the anger, suffering, love, joy, courage and enduring humanity of ordinary people and communities striving for dignity, freedom and justice.
Publisher: Cover2Cover Books, South Africa, 2016
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Cover2Cover is a small independent publisher, publishing fiction for children and young adults, including our flagship Harmony High series. We publish memoirs of …
Ethiopian literature Chrestomathy [ الأدب الاثيوبي]
Author: G.A. Balashova
Language: Amharic
The Reader includes sample works of modern writers starting with the first story by Afewerk Ghebre Jesus written in 1908 up to the writings of the early 2000s, which continue Amharic literature in various genres. The Chrestomathy is supplemented with linguistic and cultural comments of lexical, grammatical and ethno-cultural nature.
Publisher: MeaBooks Inc, Canada, 2016
http://www.meabooks.com/
Meabooks Inc. – new and out-of-print African books
www.meabooks.com
Distribution of African books in and on African languages, agriculture, anthropology, art, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso
Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains
[Poetics of Violence and Contemporary Francophone Stories]
شاعرية العنف و القصص الفرانكوفونية المعاصرة
Author: Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François
Language: French
In his comparative interdisciplinary study, Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains, Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François examines what constitutes the counter-discourse that emerging Francophone literatures articulate to think through the dynamics of violence in our contemporary world in view of the proliferation of artistic, iconographic and media representations of violence effecting our perception of our environment. In the context of the trivialization of violence, and the crisis of representation that this phenomenon produces, he underscores both the aesthetic and ethical engagement of writers from a wide range of geographical regions, by bringing together literary texts that develop a new poetics of violence, characterized by a break in the aesthetic values usually associated with the ‘unrepresentable.’ By exploring the stylistic, historical and thematic contours of these Francophone and postcolonial texts, his study invites us to better understand the thematic, aesthetic and ethic issues they raise.
Publisher: Brill, 2016
http://www.brill.com/products/book/poetiques-de-la-violence-et-recits-francophones-contemporains
