[URBANTH-L]Call for Abstract

[Fdemissie at aol.com]

International  Conference Theorizing Africa/Black Diaspora: History and  
Memory

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 March 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: _bdiaspora at depaul.edu_ 
(mailto:bdiaspora at depaul.edu)