- an art historical scrapbook -
On January 13 2014 the administration of Goodluck Jonathan passed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Under the law, LGBT Nigerians have suffered persecution and harassment.A group of Nigerian artists have chosen this date to celebrate the resilient spirit of the LGBT community, in writing and visual arts. The aim is to reclaim that date for ourselves, as we did with the word Queer.We are therefore calling on other Queer artists to join in this celebration by sending non-fiction, poetry, art commentary, art and photography, etc to rainbowanniversarynigeria@gmail.com.We also welcome works from non-LGBT artists, so long as they are LGBT-themed. The anthology will be published on Africa’s foremost literary website, Brittle Paper, on January 13 2017. It will also feature an introduction by a notable Nigerian writer. SUBMISSION GUIDELINESAll submissions should be made to our email: rainbowanniversarynigeria@gmail.com as a Word (PDF for art) attachment. The documents should contain the artist’s name and bio (more information on this under IDENTITY PROTECTION).
- Poetry: The poet can submit a maximum of two poems of not more than forty lines each. Poems should be in a single Word document.
- Non-fiction: Non-fiction should not be more than 3000 words and can be in the form of memoir or general commentary on LGBT life. More important is that the writing should be in the genre of creative non-fiction. A writer is allowed only one piece in this genre.
- Art Commentary: Writer can submit only one art commentary of not more than 3000 words. The commentary must be on a work that is homoerotic in nature or has at its centre an expression of the LGBT experience.
- Art & Photography: Artists can submit up to five drawings, paintings or pictures that are thematically and aesthetically related. These should be submitted as a PDF document, with a brief note (not more than 200 words) on the works.
- My Life In Tweets: Tweet @naijaqueerart using the hashtag #IAmQueer. We are looking for tweets by LGBT and non-LGBT Nigerians at home and in the diaspora that can capture creatively and concisely an LGBT-related experience of love, sex, discrimination, friendship, etc. You can tweet as much as you can, and in connected threads.
Deadline for Submission: 8 December 2016 (12.00 pm GMT ).IDENTITY PROTECTION: We are sensitive to the climate in Nigeria and know that most of our artists would like to protect their privacy. As a result, we encourage artists to create pseudonyms under which to feature their works. Bios, also, can contain non-specific points. Since this is an anthology celebrating queer art and resilience in Nigeria, artists are free to include their sexual or gender orientation in their bio.
Still catching up
Institute of African Studies
CALL FOR PAPERS
Culture and Society in Post-Colonial Nigeria in honor of ULLI BEIER.
November 28 – 30, 2011
The conference is being organised in honour of Ulli Beier, not only to invoke his memorable role in the cultural production in Nigeria from the years immediately before and after the independence, but also to incite robust discussion on his entire oeuvre as a cultural interventionist. In literature, in performance and in Visual Arts, the long list of artists that Ulli Beier’s many fora (Black Opheus, Mbari, Mbari Mbayo) fostered is a proof of his sterling contribution to African culture.
Culture itself encapsulates the dialogic production of meaning and aesthetics through a variety of practices. It also captures discourses associated with a mix of public and private institutions such as cinemas, the media, museums and other sites of socio-historical production. Discourses around such issues expose the mindset of a people; they mirror where a nation is coming from and the direction in which it is moving. After fifty years of independence, Nigeria requires looking back to assess itself. The project of evolving a new Nigeria has placed emphasis on political and economic factors rather than developing cultural potential for sustainable development. This is a huge lacuna given the fact that culture plays a significant role in the life of a nation.
The conference is intended to stimulate new dimensions of assessing the predicament of pre-colonial Nigeria, privileging cultural history and production. More specifically, we anticipate an interrogation of the double-bind of fusion and rupture of politics and culture. In an attempt to answer many questions that emanate from this, we expect that the conference will generate theses from a wide range of perspectives such as economics, art and science, among others.
Sub-themes include but are not limited to the following:
* Culture Theory
* Culture, Gender and (Wo)Men’s rights
* Culture, Democracy and Governance
* Globalization, Mass Culture and the New Media
* Material Culture and Cultural Performance
* Culture and Ecology
* Traditional Medicine and Spirituality
* Conflict Prevention and Management
* Social Movements and Ethics
Keynote speakers:
Professor Akin Ogundiran, Chair, Africana Studies Department,University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC.: Topic: Crises of Culture and Consciousness in the Postcolony: What is the Future for Nigeria?
Professor Wole Ogundele, Director Centre for Black culture and International Understanding, Osogbo, Osun State.: Topic: He Lived among the Orisha: Ulli Beier and the Yoruba Cultural Revival.
Conference Venue: Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
An abstract of not more than 250 words is expected to reach the conference organizers through the following e-mail addresses:
Ohioma Pogoson tellohio[at]ahoo.com
Ayo Adeduntan grandeekay[at]ahoo.com
not later than August 15, 2011. Participants shall be notified of the acceptance of their abstracts by August 31, 2011.
Critical Encounters: A Graduate Student Symposium in Honor of Sidney Littlefield Kasfir
Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, Art History Department, and Institute for African Studies announce a graduate student symposium in honor of Sidney Littefield Kasfir.
Keynote address
Friday, April 22, 2011
7:30 pm
Chika Okeke-Agulu, Assistant Professor of Art History, Princeton University is a curator, artist and art historian and co-author of Contemporary African Art Since 1980, will deliver the keynote address.
Graduate Symposium
Saturday, April 23, 2011
9:30 am – 5:30 pm
“If tourist art, the lowest common denominator of what is thought by Westerners to be inauthentic in African art, can be deconstructed in ways that make the definition of authenticity full of self-contradictions, then the same kinds of questions can be asked even more readily about other non-canonical categories such as “elite” or “international” art. Now, in the closing years of the twentieth century, it is perhaps time to bring the canon into better alignment with the corpus, with what African artists actually make, and to leave behind a rather myopic classificatory system based so heavily on an Africa of the mind”
— Sidney L. Kasfir, “African Art and Authenticity: A Text with a Shadow” in African Arts
Throughout her career Dr. Sidney L. Kasfir has sought to rethink the way scholars, artists, museums, and viewers understand and categorize African art. She has attempted to expand our classificatory system, without allowing generalizations to dilute the complex efforts of artists, cultures, and visual languages. This symposium, organized in honor of her retirement from Emory University, considers three themes to which Dr. Kasfir has contributed: Commodification and Tourism; Heritage; and The Artist, the Workshop, and Cultural Brokerage.
Proposals should consider one of these three major themes. Papers should be twenty minutes in length. We welcome submissions from graduate students from any discipline and at all stages of their studies working with visual culture in Africa. Airfare and accommodations will be provided for students whose papers are accepted.
Deadline for submissions: Please send your cv and a one-page abstract by mail or email no later than February 5, 2011 to:
Elizabeth Hornor
Marguerite Colville Ingram Director of Education
Michael C. Carlos Museum
571 South Kilgo Circle
Atlanta, GA 30322
Ehornor [at] emory.edu
Selected speakers will be notified by email by March 5, 2011.
… I’m supposed to finish off this proposal but … yeah, its urgently time for some procrastination, so let’s quickly post on the blog, nothing I write myself, so it won’t take long, right, but long enough to … eh, delay writing that theory section for another minute or two …
4th European Conference on African Studies, 15-18 June, 2011 in Uppsala, Sweden
Conference Theme: African Engagements: On whose terms?
In the past two decades, Africa has experienced some dramatic changes. Between 1990 and 2005, in more than 42 African countries peaceful and democratic changes of government took place through competitive multiparty elections, notwithstanding more recent setbacks in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Gabon. On the economic front, Africa emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing regions in the wake of a boom in the international commodities market, despite the recent global financial crisis. Some African countries have put in place appropriate macroeconomic, structural and social policies that have contributed to improved growth rates and some progress towards meeting the MDGs. Significant efforts are also being made to reverse the productivity decline in agriculture and the decline in higher education and basic research in the face of equally daunting challenges including poverty, and post-conflict reconstruction and democratic consolidation. However, there are encouraging signs that the Africa Union and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are playing important roles with some international support in dealing with potentially disruptive national crises, such as in the Sudan, Somalia, and most recently Guinea and Niger.
The call for panels for this conference is now closed and a list of the accepted panels and short panel descriptions can be found here.
We hereby invite all interested scholars to submit paper proposals for presentation on one of the approved ECAS 4 panels. Please submit your paper abstract (maximum 400 words or 2300 – 2400 characters, including spaces) via the link below. To submit your abstract you will first be requested to register as an official conference website user. After registration you will receive an e-mail with access confirmation and further instructions on how to submit your abstract. Please read and follow these instructions carefully.
To be accepted paper proposals need to fit into one of the approved panels. The deadline for the submission of paper abstracts is Wednesday 22 December 2010. All paper proposals will be reviewed in January 2011, and those who have submitted abstracts will be notified no later than 28 February 2011 as to whether their paper has been accepted or not.
For questions relating to papers you wish to propose to panels, please contact the panel organiser directly. Contact details of panel organisers can be found in the list of panels and above each of the panel descriptions.
For general questions concerning paper proposals, please contact the Organising Committee of ECAS 4 at: ECAS4@nai.uu.se .
Each panel session will last two hours and will accommodate a maximum of four papers. If a panel attracts more than four strong and relevant paper proposals, the panel organiser may consider organising an additional session and should, in this case, consult with the Organising Committee accordingly. The decision on double sessions will be made upon request by the panel organisers, based on the number and quality of paper proposals uploaded to the panel via the abstract submission system. The issue of double panels may also be limited by time and/or space factors.
For the organization of ECAS 4 the Nordic Africa Institute is financially supported by some external institutions. Part of the contributions will be used for sponsoring of participation in the conference by African students and researchers based in Africa. Details on how to apply for a sponsored participation will be made available as early as possible.
The registration is now open! Click here to register.
Registration fees:
All conference fees are charged in SEK (Swedish Krona), including VAT. Payments should be made in advance of the conference. The corresponding fees in EUROS stated below are approximate and exchange rates may vary.
For current exchange rates, please visit
www.oanda.com or www.x-rates.com
| Fee* | |
| Early registration (15 October 2010 – 15 March 2011) | SEK 1200 (EUR 130) |
| Standard registration (16 March 2011 – June 2011) | SEK 1500 (EUR 160) |
| PhD/Master students - early registration (15 October 2010 – 15 March 2011) | SEK 800 (EUR 85) |
| PhD/Master students - standard registration (16 March 2011 – June 2011) | SEK 950 (EUR 100) |
| One conference day | SEK 600 (EUR 65) |
| One conference day PhD/Masters students | SEK 400 (EUR 45) |
| Conference dinner only | SEK 500 (EUR 55) |
| *VAT is included in all fees. | |
Reduced price for PhD/Masters students will only be accepted upon verification of enrolment:
In order to register as a PhD or Masters student you should send a signed letter from the Head of your department to the following address: ECAS4@nai.uu.se or by fax: +46 18 56 22 90.
Find more details here.
Call for Papers 2010/11
German-African Scholarship Exchange Programme
14th August – 4th September 2010
An Initiative of the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education
The Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb) is granting fellowships to students and young graduates enabling them to take part in a four-week seminar to be held from 14th August to 4th September 2010 in
The fellowship holders are invited to take part in an education programme that will encompass both talks with political decision-makers, personalities from civil society and industry, academics and journalists from both countries and will give participants the opportunity to take part in political and cultural events and excursions. The participants are to contribute towards implementing the programme by assisting in organising lectures and facilitating group discussions. They will also draw up an interdisciplinary strategy paper on an academic subject that will be prepared in
The event is directed at students and young graduates from Germany, Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Republic of the Congo, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Applicants should be between 21 and 28 years old and be studying or have a degree in political science, modern history, international relations, economics, business administration, African studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies or law.
The seminar will be delivered in English; the number of participants is limited to 24, twelve from African countries and twelve from
Students and graduates who are interested can apply to the Federal Agency for Civic Education by submitting an essay comprising a maximum of three A4 pages (approx. 6,000 characters) written in English. The essay must be accompanied by a curriculum vitae in tabular form, a letter of motivation comprising no more than one A4 page and a photograph (the following information must be provided: surname, first name, gender, date of birth, profession, job/field of study, place of study, place of work and place of residence).
Applicants must also issue a declaration stating that they wrote the essay without any help from third parties. Please note that the Federal Agency for Civic Education is not able to cover costs for obtaining visas or medical care. The acceptance of African participants to the programme only becomes final, when the German Embassy in the participant’s home country has issued the relevant visa. There is no possibility to legally claim the participation in the programme.
A further condition for receiving a grant is that applicants must be able to participate for the entire period.
Full applications (essay, CV, letter of motivation, photo) must be e-mailed to the Federal Agency for Civic Education at goafrica-at-bpb.de by 15 March 2010.
For more detailed information about the application process, please visit the website: www.bpb.de/goafrica. Further Scholarship Information (pdf)
Also, cf. Scholarship-Positions.Com
Another interesting call for papers that came into my inbox …
| 50 Years of African Independencies: Challenges to Modernity Lisbon, 9-11 September 2010 |
Between 9 and 11 Sep 2010, the CEA ISCTE/IUL and the CEAUP are organizing the 7th Iberian
Presentation
How does Africa look at its past, its present, its future? Rather than wondering about the reality of specific African conceptions of historical time, the CIEA7 proposes to examine the terms by which African societies refer to a transformative vision of the past and the dynamics of the present, in search of visions of the future. Our aim is to see how their visions transcend the particular identities of societies and nations of the continent and evaluate their regional, political and religious variations.
Fifty years after the independence of most African countries, the continent is facing a range of new opportunities for international dialogue. Such new opportunities undermine traditional assumptions that relate to their historical relationship with their former colonizing countries while valuing the nature and variety of their cultural heritage.
Various African societies have found innovative responses to the challenges of globalization, either relating to the fields of trade, politics and culture or to the complex scenarios of economic, environmental and energy crises that have been affecting all humanity. These responses and the accompanying re-readings of the past have been the basis of profound identity shifts that reveal the weaknesses of attempts to apply external models of society and state of European and American origin to African countries.
For the three plenary sessions of the Congress, the Executive Board considers it important to define a set of specific topics focused on recent transformations in African historiography, an analysis of the contemporary dynamics of African states, and conflicting perceptions of the continent's future.
For the past 50 years,1960 has been regarded by historians and politicians as a fundamental rupture, which completely redefined the relationship between African societies and their old metropolises. It was only recently that it became acceptable to attempt to understand decolonization as a process with many continuities that promoted the emergence of African-European networks - both formal and informal - and whose main period, between 1945 and 1960 (or 1975 in the case of the Portuguese empire), reshaped the composition of local elites and authorities. Political attitudes and experiences changed, such as the assumption (or not) of democratic and participatory principles. In addition, the last fifteen (or thirty) years of the late colonial period were marked by major changes in the traditional institutions of African societies and by the introduction of 'modern' structures for transforming regional economies.
These contradictory developments have not been sufficiently studied and lack a comparative perspective. The organizers of the session welcome proposals that can contribute to the development of analytical models of these quite heterogeneous historical realities, and will prefer presentations that emphasize the role of African historical actors.
Fifty years after the independencies, African states are facing new challenges both at local and global level. Locally, they are faced with new requirements, be it the democratization processes imposed in the past 20 years, recent demand for greater decentralization of power, and the liberalization and deregulation of markets. In this session we propose to question the multiplicity of state models in Africa, and the intricacies of local power: democratic models and oligarchies, local disputes and recurring regional conflicts, fragile states and regional powers. This session invites the submission of panels addressing the role of international institutions and the new “moral order” as a prerequisite of access to external financing in support of African states; inspecting conflicts in Africa and peace building and peacekeeping processes; focusing on decentralization processes of in Africa and state intervention; questioning development plans and their implementation, the economic survival of African states, the role of cost-effective solutions in the survival of local populations, and the influence of diasporas in state building; discussing the integration of African states in the new international order, considering the interest represented by Brazil, India and China or the policy initiated by the Obama administration; and the relationship between African and European states.
Africa is usually portrayed as a continent where external models of development seem bound to fail. This is generally true for large projects designed without taking local characteristics into account. A closer look at specific situations on the ground reveals the strong dynamism of African societies and the enormous capacity demonstrated by both individuals and groups to combine endogenous and exogenous elements to develop numerous strategies that challenge superficial categorizations. Such creativity is found in very diverse areas such as migration, trade, ICTs and the fields of health and youth, and in the reconfiguring of the sociopolitical and religious spheres. This local DIY allows African societies to adapt to new contexts while keeping some of their traditions alive, thereby producing tensions that challenge the limits of the usual notions of modernity. This session welcomes panels that address these many expressions of creativity.
The Center for African Studies (ISCTE / Lisbon University Institute) and the Center for African Studies of the University of Porto are organizing the 7th Iberian Congress of African Studies which will be hosted by ISCTE / Lisbon University Institute between 9 and 11 September 2010.
We invite all interested parties to submit proposals for panels to one of the plenary sessions proposed. The organizers will give preference to panels co-organized by researchers from different universities and institutions.
The official languages of the Congress are Portuguese, Spanish and English, and the panels can be spoken in any of these languages.
Proposals for panels should be sent to: vii.congresso.estudos.africanos@gmail.com
December 10 to January 20: Call for panels
February 15: Communication of accepted panels
February 20 to March 30: Call for papers
April 30: Notification of accepted papers
CEA/ISCTE-IUL
Av. das Forças Armadas
Edifício ISCTE, Sala 2N17
1649-026 Lisboa - Portugal
Tel: +351 217 903 067
Fax: +351 217 955 361
URL: http://cea.iscte.pt
Email: cea@iscte.pt