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International Conference Theorizing Africa/Black Diaspora: History and Memory
Location: United States

The Center for Black Diaspora, African Identities: Journal of Economy, Culture and Society (Routledge) and the University of South Africa Press are pleased to announce an international conference on ?Theorizing African/Black Diaspora: History and Memory? to be held at DePaul University, May 19 and 20, 2006.
The conference explores the intellectual history, analytical and interrogative discourses that constitute the distinctive and interdisciplinary field of African/Black Diaspora Studies in the production of knowledge of the deterritorialised and transnational nature of the African/Black Diaspora. Moving beyond essentialist modes of theorizing about the emergent field of African/Black Diaspora Studies, the conference provides a venue for a critical exploration of history and memory and how these ideas illuminate the movement (geographic, cultural, political and psychological) of the African/Black Diaspora in the context of globalized and transnational spaces.

In the last half of the 20th century, African/Black Diaspora Studies emerged as a critical space to interrogate dominant narratives and to reconceptualize the histories, politics and cultures of the silenced voices of African/Black diaspora in various academic fields. What is the state of knowledge of African/Black Diaspora Studies at the present moment? In what ways does the interdisciplinarity of the field contribute to theorizing African/Black Diaspora? How does the present reconfiguration of various fields and blurred academic boundaries provide new critical spaces to advance the field of African/Black Diaspora Studies? What is the role of archives - past and present, embedded and embodied memories in contributing to new frontiers of knowledge in African/Black Diaspora Studies? How does the improvisational nature of African/Black Diasporic culture and its radical narratives serve as sites for the production of knowledge? In what ways does the field of African/Black Diaspora Studies intersect and open new conversations with other diasporas about the past, present and future?

Conference Conveners:
Fassil Demissie

Sandra Jackson
Depaul University

Abebe Zegeye
University of South Africa

Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of African Identities, (Routledge), and an edited book as an outgrowth of the conference is also planned.

Proposal of approximately 300 -- words abstract should be sent organizing Committee by January 30,2006.

Conference Organizing Committee
Center for Black Diaspora
DePaul University
2320 N. Kemore Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60614-3250

Proposals can be submitted by e-mail as a Microsoft attachment, with a subject reading ?Theorizing African/Black Diaspora? to: [email protected]

Fassil Demissie
Public Policy Studies
DePaul University
2320 N. Kenmore Avenue
Chicago, IL 60614
Phone: (773) 325-7512
Fax: (773) 325-7514
773-325
Email: [email protected]
Visit the website at http://condor.depaul.edu/~diaspora

Added by afrofur on December 12, 2005

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