GRFDT

Diaspora (Re) Writing of Race and Space: An International Conference

Remapping the Black Atlantic: Diaspora
(Re)Writings of Race and Space
International Conference
April 12-14, 2013

It has been two decades since the publication of Paul Gilroy’s seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993) which marked a pivotal shift in our understanding of the experience of transnational Black modernity. More than simply understanding Black experiences from around the Atlantic basin as being marginal to or derived from the culture of modernity, Gilroy argued that for over a century and a half, Black intellectuals have travelled and worked in a transnational framework that precludes anything but a superficial association with their country of origin. Expanding on DuBois' crucial notion of "double consciousness," Gilroy argued for a modernity broad enough in, scope not simply including the marginal positions of slaves, but also positing the ungenteel" aspects of slavery and terror as fundamentally crucial to understanding modernity itself. Since the publication of Gilroy’s influential book, there has been a lively and sustained engagement in rethinking the history of African Diaspora and indeed the history of modernity itself.

The Organizing Committee is pleased to announce an international conference, Remapping the Black Atlantic: Diaspora (Re)Writings of Race and Space to be held at DePaul University, April 12-14, 2013. This conference is designed to provide a critical space to remap the Black Atlantic beyond Gilroy’s original framework of the Black Atlantic anchored in the Anglophone Atlantic or the American branch of the African Diaspora in light of changing discourse regarding African and Black Diaspora Studies and related fields, taking into account history, contemporary contexts, location,movement, globalization, migration and the circulation of Black bodies and their experiences and what these things signify in a transnational framework. We seek papers from a broad array of disciplines and fields to invite critical engagement in exploring the multiplicity of ways in which the African and Black Diaspora is being mapped and rewritten. Proposed papers should address one of the following thematic clusters around which the conference is organized:

• Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity
• Migration and Entangled Networks
• Gendering and Queering Black Diaspora Identities
• Governmentality and Transnational Black Politics
• Popular Culture and Mass Media
• The Internet: On and Off the Grid -- Texting, Tweeting, Social Networks, the Archives and Access
• Performing and Translating Africa -- Music, Dance, Rituals, Language, and Style
• The Arts and Literature: Black Diaspora Subjectivities

   

Abstract should be sent to: [email protected]

Deadline for submitting abstracts, October 20, 2012

Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by November 5, 2012.

Sponsors:

* The Center for Black Diaspora         

* African and Back Diaspora: An International Journal

Time and Place: