Category: call for participation

Call for book and film reviews

The Journal of African Media Studies (JAMS) invites book and film reviews from
junior and senior researchers, scholars and professionals from around the
world, and particularly from the African continent. JAMS invites film reviews
on African films thematically anchored in Africa or films by the African
diaspora. Book and film reviews should not be longer than 1,000 words. All
reviews submitted should be original work. Reviews should follow both JAMS and
Intellect submission guidelines for contributors. Manuscripts can be e-mailed
to the Book Reviews Editor:
Martin Nkosi Ndlela
Hedmark University College, Norway
Nkosi.Ndlela@hihm.no

Please click here for submission guidelines and general information about the
Journal of African Media Studies
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=166/view,page=2/

CALL FOR PAPERS
2012 BIENNIAL SCHOLARS’ CONFERENCE ON AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY
Center for Jewish History, New York City

The 2012 AJHS Scholars’ Conference will explore disciplinary and other
kinds of boundaries that currently confront the field of American
Jewish history. It will examine the opportunities and challenges that
arise from the engagement of history and the humanities (including
literary studies, media studies, theater, dance and art history,
cultural studies, and musicology) as well as the social sciences
(anthropology, economics, folklore, linguistics, political science,
psychology, sociology). The conference will also explore the impact
that the work of American Jewish historians has had on other
disciplines.

Looking beyond disciplinary boundaries raises various questions:  How
has the interdisciplinary study of American Jewry developed?  How does
the study of American Jewish history take shape in relation to area
studies or comparative programs, such as American Studies, Ethnic
Studies, Comparative Religions, or Jewish Studies?  What kinds of
cross-disciplinary engagements would best enhance the field of
American Jewish history?

In considering disciplinary boundaries, how do they compare with other
boundaries that figure in the work of American Jewish historians?
These other boundaries include:

*   Geographical boundaries (e.g., in studies of immigration or of
American Jews as part of a transnational or diasporic community)
*   Cultural boundaries (e.g., in studies that examine the relation
of Jews with their neighbors, comparative studies of Jews vis-à-vis
other groups, or the study of communities that test the limits of
Jewish peoplehood)
*   Discursive boundaries (e.g., in studies that engage non-verbal
forms of expression)
*   Institutional boundaries (in work that bridges the academy and
the arts, or institutions of public culture, or work that addresses a
general public audience or reflects Jewish communal concerns)

The committee invites proposals for papers that engage any of the
aforementioned issues and encourages the submission of complete panel
proposals and roundtable presentations. The organizers view the theme
of “beyond boundaries” very broadly, and will consider a wide range of
proposals bearing on all aspects of the American Jewish experience,
though preference will go to those that deal in some way with the
conference’s central theme.

Graduate students completing dissertations may submit proposals
accompanied by a letter of recommendation from their advisor. All
submissions must include a one-page (250 words) paper abstract, short
(120 words) biography, and a specific indication of technological
needs. Complete panel proposals are strongly encouraged. Please send
proposals to hsalomon@ajhs.org by November 15, 2011.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Multi-Session Workshop: Representing the Irrepresentable: Narratives and
Visual Images of Slavery, Forced Labor, and Genocide

127th American Historical Association Meeting

New Orleans, January 3 – 6, 2013

Convened by Ana Lucia Araujo (Department of History; Howard University,
Washington, DC)

This workshop will gather scholars working on written narratives
(documents, autobiographies, personal journals, novels, etc.) and visual
images (painting, drawings, photographs, engravings, movies, etc.) dealing
with forced displacement, enslavement, slavery, forced labor, war, and
genocide. The various participants will engage in understanding how the
multiple dimensions of traumatic human experiences can be conveyed through
images and narratives. How historians can examine written and visible
representations of irrepresentable events? Can narratives and images
provide reliable and/or accurate information for historians to interpret
traumatic dimensions of past and present human experience? How historians
articulate the use of eyewitness accounts (visual and written) with
fiction (novel, films) in order to represent past traumatic experiences?
What are the limits, the challenges, and the possibilities faced by
historians who employ narratives and images of trauma in their works? By
focusing on various historical periods and geographical areas, scholars
are invited to submit proposals addressing these questions and examining
specific case studies. Papers focusing on the Atlantic slave trade and
slavery, colonialism in Africa, the Holocaust, Nazi labor camps, the
Armenian genocide, the Apartheid, the Rwandan genocide, the war in Darfur,
contemporary slavery, and human trafficking, are welcome.

Please send your paper proposal no later than February 1st 2012 to: aaraujo@howard.edu or analucia.araujo@gmail.com

Paper proposals must contain:

– Paper’s title

– Abstract (up to 300 words)

– Biographical paragraph (up to 250 words, no curriculum vitae, please)

– Correct mailing and e-mail address

– Audiovisual needs, if any

Chairs and commentators, please send:

– Biographical paragraph (up to 250 words, no curriculum vitae, please)

– Correct mailing and e-mail addresses

Please note:

– Abstracts of accepted proposals will be posted on the AHA program website.

– Papers must be submitted on December 1st 2012 for the panel commentators.

Pictures in motion: photography, empire, and resistance

The announcement of photography’s invention in 1839 coincided with the rise
of imperial ambition in the United States and the development of
post-colonial states in the Americas. Since then, photographs have been in
constant circulation across this region, serving as instruments of both
imperial expansion and resistance. While the camera has documented people
and places in ways that define their subordinate relationship to centers of
power, it has also enabled subjects to undermine such power. For the 2012
Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association –“Dimensions of Empire
and Resistance: Past, Present, and Future,” November 15-18 in San Juan,
Puerto Rico–we are putting together a proposal for a session that examines
the cultural work done by photography’s circulation throughout the Americas.
We welcome papers that reflect on the photographic production,
dissemination, and reinterpretation of collective identities and/or
stereotypes. Papers that address the spread of photographic conventions and
their local adaptations are also appropriate, as are studies of photographic
practices that move between the center and periphery of imperial structures.
By December 15, 2011, please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words
and a current cv to: Elizabeth Hutchinson (ehutchin@barnard.edu) and Tanya
Sheehan (tsheehan@rci.rutgers.edu). Note that individuals may not
participate in more than one session at the ASA meeting.

An interdisciplinary postgraduate symposium

3 December 2011

School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds.

Keynote Speaker, Prof. Lubaina Himid, International artist and curator, University of Central Lancashire

Call for Papers Deadline 15th September 2011

In 1995 Kobena Mercer published the first in his Annotating Art’s Histories edited series, Cosmopolitan Modernisms.  In his introduction, Mercer stated that the series would offer:

‘[A] fresh approach [to art history] by showing how a shared history of art and ideas was experienced differently around the globe … In a situation where the aspiration to be all inclusive has become the official watchword of institutional policy, has the very idea of ‘inclusion’ now become a double-edged sword?’

In 2011, as a developing generation of artists, curators, art historians and academics enter the field of visual arts, this symposium at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, seeks to investigate how we are to engage with the challenges of a shared and plural art history that Mercer, and so many others, speak of.   What is the meaning of ‘inclusion’ today, sixteen years after Mercer’s publication? The symposium hopes to explore the numerous ways in which issues of race, culture, class, sex and gender have been considered across the various arenas of visual art, and how this emerging generation of those operating in the visual arts engage with the existing challenges of the past, present and future.

Otherwise Engaged is a one-day symposium that invites postgraduate students to submit proposals that consider the challenges of intervention, integration, separatism, confrontation, assimilation, ghettoisation and accommodation.  How have marginalised spaces and mainstream institutions engaged with these challenges?  We are interested in exploring the processes, relationships and pluralities of the various sites of the marginal and the mainstream.  What are the experiences and examples of specific interventions, theoretical strategic models, and tactical approaches from contemporary art practice and writing, culture, education and curating?

Otherwise Engaged is an interdisciplinary event that crosshatches experiences, perspectives and analyses from art history, fine art, cultural studies, museum and curatorial studies, feminist studies, gender studies, sociology and post/colonial studies, although papers from other disciplines are also welcome. While the symposium is situated in contemporary Britain and the complexities of representation and identity internal to Britain, we strongly encourage the exploration of relationships with other sites, both geographically and generationally.

We invite abstracts of a maximum length of 300 words by 15 September 2011 (20 minute papers). You will receive confirmation of acceptance of the proposed presentation by October 1, 2011.  You will need to submit your proposal together with a completed form available from the conference organisers – contact  espencermills@yahoo.com.

http://www.aaastudies.org/2012/call/

Washington, DC April 11-14, 2012

Submissions due by Saturday, October 1, 2010

EXPANDING THE POLITICAL: POWER, POETICS, PRACTICES

The theme, “Expanding the Political: Power, Poetics, Practices,” refers to the location of the meetings in Washington, DC, the seat of politics and power in the United States. Asian Americans play an increasing role in U.S. and international politics in their roles as voters, politicians, and policy makers. At the same time, we wish to highlight the everyday and informal political practices of Asians in America as they use art, academics, and activism to engage—and change—the world around them. We invite submissions that address formal politics and informal politics in their multiple dimensions.

We welcome presentations that explore traditional conceptions of “politics” and political action on topics such as electoral politics, Asian Americans in the government, activism and social movements, and political interests and issues. Do Asian Americans constitute a political block (or have they ever)? How can we interpret the increasing presence of Asian American Republican politicians? Is “Asian America” a useful political category? Simultaneously, we hope the conference will expand our conception of the political to other areas including, but not limited to, the politics of: commemoration and memorialization; war and peace; dynamics within/across/outside Asian American communities, communities of color, and multiracial Asians; immigration, refugee status, citizenship, and national belonging; the relationship between Pacific Island Studies and Asian American Studies; Asian settler colonialism; empire and race. What generative political work emerges in the conversation between academics, activists, and artists? How do Asian Americans contend with the politics of the everyday? The overarching emphasis for this meeting is the analysis of power in its various manifestations in Asian American lives.

We encourage submissions representing all the disciplines covered in Asian American Studies and from individuals engaged in political work, broadly speaking, outside the academy, including politicians, artists and activists. We especially encourage panels incorporating a range of institutional and extra-institutional locations, from students to senior scholars, and from painters to policy makers. Complete panel submissions (with a minimum of three papers and a maximum of four, with a moderator) that attend to the conference theme and reflect this heterogeneity will be given priority, but we will consider individual submissions as well.

In addition to panels, workshops, and roundtables, this year we introduce an inaugural invitation for chaired WORKING PAPER sessions dedicated specifically to this year’s conference theme. For these sessions, panelists will submit longer papers (15-25 pages) prior to the conference, and sessions will be devoted to intensive commentary and discussion on a set of 2-3 papers with a shared theme. A faculty expert on the theme will chair each session and deliver detailed feedback to each author. This format will foster a deeper scholarly exchange and engagement, and showcase the common intellectual threads that run through our diverse research projects. We encourage scholars from various ranks to submit their papers to the Working Paper sessions.

We accept electronic submissions. Paper and panel applicants must be members of the Association for Asian American Studies and all presenters must register and submit their conference fee to be included in the printed conference program. Please check the “WORKING PAPERS” box if you would like your paper or panel submission to be considered for the Working Papers chaired sessions. Relevant information, including the membership form and submissions guidelines, is available at the Association for Asian American Studies Web site at http://www.aaastudies.org/forms

We look forward to seeing you at the 2012 Association for Asian American Studies conference in Washington, DC!

Committee Co-Chairs,
Sylvia Chong and Nitasha Sharma

*All paper and panel applicants must be members of AAAS in order to submit conference proposals. AAAS membership number or confirmation of membership from JHUP will be required with all proposals.

**AV equipment will be available on request but on a limited, first-come-first-served basis due to budget restrictions. Please make your requests when sending in your proposals.

“Textile Trades and Consumption in the Indian Ocean World, from Early
Times to the Present”

Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC)
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2-4 November 2012

Co-Organisers: Gwyn Campbell (IOWC, McGill University), Sarah Fee (Royal
Ontario Museum), and Pedro Machado (Indiana University)

This multi-disciplinary international conference aims to bring together
scholars from across the humanities and social sciences to share findings,
methodologies and theoretical perspectives on cloth’s critical role in
driving exchanges in the Indian Ocean World from early times to the present
day.

Oceans have emerged as promising intellectual frameworks for reinterpreting
past and present spatial and temporal constructs. The Indian Ocean World
(IOW) in particular has recently attracted academic attention as a space of
movement and inter-relation that transcends conventional paradigms centring
on the nation state, regional studies, and European empires. Stretching from
East Africa through the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia to China, the
IOW forms a unique macro-region where the monsoon regime of winds and
currents largely moulded production and exchange. Indeed, the IOW emerged
during the first millennium CE as arguably the first “global” economy,
defined as a sophisticated and durable system of long-distance exchange.
There is further debate as to the impact on the IOW trading structure of
Europeans from the sixteenth century, the international economy of the
nineteenth century, European colonialism and its aftermath, and modern
globalisation.

Central to these debates is the role of textiles. For centuries, cloths of
various origins, fibres, colours and patterns have been carried along coasts
and across vast distances to communities that demanded certain types in
accordance with their specific cultural, social and political universes.
Rather than take a particular fibre, ‘country’ or European company as the
unit of study, this conference aims to explore the broader cross-currents of
textile flows in the IOW. It seeks to explore, in particular, structures of
trade, distribution, demand, marketing and consumption – in all of which
finance and credit played vital roles. It also strives to understand local
consumer demand as a vital force in shaping the economic, political, social,
and artistic history in both producer and consumer communities. Emerging
from the wider scholarship of culturally inflected material histories of the
movement and exchange of commodities, the study of textile consumption and
the logics of consumer tastes, as socially and culturally embedded
processes, can offer compelling insight into how societies, communities and
people create and maintain identities through strategies of self-fashioning,
and thereby shape the world around them. Moreover, it is when studied within
the same analytical frame as the production, distribution and marketing of
textiles that consumption can contribute most profoundly to an understanding
of the dynamics of the worlds of the Indian Ocean stretching from Africa to
East Asia.

This multi-disciplinary international conference invites paper proposals
that examine any aspect of the trade, exchange and consumption of textiles in
the Indian Ocean world from early times to the present day. We particularly
welcome papers that explore networks and structures of:

– local finance and credit
– distribution and marketing
– demand and consumption

and within these the significance of (i) gender and age; and (ii) religious
practice and ideology  (including the ritual, political and social uses and
meanings attached to imported cloth)

Dates and Registration:
•  Deadline for submission of abstracts (title; 1-2 paragraphs): 30
September 2011.
• The review process will be completed by 1st November 2001.
•  Papers selected for the conference must be submitted no later than
1st September 2012.
•  The registration fee is $175 US ($75 US for students) payable by
1st September 2012.
•  The late registration fee (after 1st September 2012) is $200 US and $100
US for students

Kindly contact Sarah Fee <sarahf@rom.on.ca> or Pedro Machado
<pmachado@indiana.edu> with proposals (or with any queries).

African Music in the 21st Century – An Iconic Turn?
An International Symposium Celebrating the 21st Anniversary of the African Music Archives Mainz (AMA)
To be held at: Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. June 13th – 16th 2012

Convenors: Hauke Dorsch, Matthias Krings

Since the advent of the 21st century and the proliferation of digital media a shift in the consumption and marketing of music in a number of African countries occurred: Videos gained an increasing importance. Today, Video-CDs and DVDs are widely sold in African cities, bars and restaurants show music clips and music casting shows on TV, music videos are available online through sites like youtube, but also via homepages and blogs devoted to artists, genres, and (at least ideally) music of the entire continent.

Due to this online availability and easy circulation of discs the visual aspects of music, especially dance styles, clothing fashions, and coiffure spread more easily and rapidly than ever before between different African countries and between African and its Diaspora. For example, migrants stay up to date with regards to musical and fashion trends in their respective countries of origin thanks to these videos. Prior to the mediatisation of African music through visual technologies, dance styles could only be transmitted through the presence of human bodies. Due to the proliferation of videos African dance and music travel trans-nationally on South-South and South-North axes at an accelerated speed.

So far, the pictorial turn (Mitchell) or iconic turn (Boehm) in Cultural Studies informed only few studies on African music. Consequently, the change following the digitisation and video-isation of the production and dissemination of African music is still under-researched. Taking music videos as its vantage point, this symposium will look at visual aspects of the performance and analysis of music more generally.

We invite young researchers and established scholars to present papers on the different ways music in Africa (and beyond) is interpreted, illustrated, translated or extended in its meaning by visual representations. These may refer to the analysis of individual videos, the comparison of a number of videos, or genres, changing trends of video aesthetics, the convergence of visual and aesthetic trends from elsewhere – in Africa and beyond (i.e. MTV, Bollywood, etc.). Furthermore, papers on the transformation (or even emergence) of music industries in Africa due to the impact of the visual are welcome. How are music videos produced on the ground? Who are the agents of the iconic turn in African music? How does music television support the iconic turn in African music? Finally, we invite papers on other aspects of the visual in music, performance (i.e. looking at costumes, stage shows, stage lighting, etc.), on festivals and of course dance.

The symposium will celebrate the African Music Archives’ 21st anniversary. The AMA hosts Germany’s largest collection of recordings of African popular music. It includes roughly 10.000 recordings, from shellac records of the 1950s, to vinyl discs and singles from the 1960s to the 1990s, to music cassettes of the 1980s and 90s, to recent CDs, VideoCDs and DVDs.

The symposium will be hosted by the African Music Archives, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. It will take place on campus from June 13th to 16th. Organisers: Dr. Hauke Dorsch, Prof. Dr. Matthias Krings
Please submit your proposal no later than Sept., 15th 2011 and your full paper no later than May, 23rd 2012 to Hauke Dorsch dorschh@uni-mainz.de.