> Date: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 4:26 PM
> From: Kwabena O Akurang-Parry
> <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> ASA PANEL ON RETHINKING ABOLITION IN AFRICA
>
> The publication of The Atlantic Slave Trade. A Census by Philip
Curtin in
> 1969 propelled the study of slavery and the slave trade to the forefront
of
> African history. Since then scholars have focused on various aspects of
> slavery in Africa. Stretching the symmetrical trajectory of African
history, a
> spate of studies, encapsulating animated debates and pristine conclusions,
> has neglected African contributions of idealogies of antislavery to the
global
> abolition epoch of the nineteenth-century. The cumulative history of
> antislavery and emancipation in Euro-America has been berthed in
Enlightenment
> discourses and religious revivalist epistemologies. Conversely, the
history of
> slavery in Africa has been firmly anchored in terrains of static models of
> African kinship dependencies, as well, antislavery and emancipation in
Africa
> have been credited to beneficent European agencies. Recent scholarship,
that
> emphasizes the centrality of Africa in the making of the Atlantic
community,
> has accentuated diasporic African contributions to the emergence of
ideologies
> and epistemologies of liberation, but failed to give similar attributes to
> continental Africans.
>
> In view of the above, I am organizing a panel for the 2004 ASA eetings in
New
> Orleans. The panel will address African agency and voice in abolition.
> Papers may highlight the active, but often unheralded efforts of Africans,
> individually as well as members of antislavery groups, in pushing for
> abolitionism and countering enslavement and slave trade. If you are
> interested in joining this collective effort, which may lead to
publication,
> please contact me at [log in to unmask] by March 10, 2004.
>
> Kwabena O Akurang-Parry
> Asst Prof., African History/World History
> Department of History
> Shippensburg University
> Shippensburg, PA 17257
> Tel: 717 477 1286
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