***A reminder that submissions for this conference close in 1 week***


*CALL FOR PAPERS*



*“**Memory and Performance in African-Atlantic Futures**”*



*Three-day International Conference*

*31 August - 2 September 2018 – University of Leeds*



At a time when new dynamics are emerging around the issues of justice
(transitional, reparative, etc.), mourning and commemoration in Africa and
its diaspora, the conference “Memory and Performance in African-Atlantic
Futures” seeks to consider the current historical conjuncture and the
extent to which it reveals new questions about memory in the historical,
temporal and social contexts of slavery and imperialism. For example, how
do the growing calls for reparations and the urge to restructure or
challenge the politics of commemoration within imperialist societies point
to the emergence of new “conceptual-ideological problem-spaces”
(Scott, *Conscripts
of Modernity*) in how African-Atlantic postcolonial communities engage with
historical memory? How will an analysis of these dynamics, of the gaps they
point to, and of the urgencies they highlight, foster new understandings of
the stakes that the particular memories of slavery and imperialism bear
within the spaces marked by this history, including the imperialist
societies themselves?

In tackling these questions, we wish to consider the valences of
performance in the contemporary moment and the extent to which they are
cross-fertilising and mediating the most urgent issues in Africa-Atlantic
memory. We wish to reflect on how spaces and modes of performance –
including, but not limited to, theatre, dance, literary texts, music,
visual art and sports – are being used to energise both the particular and
the entangled concerns of aesthetics, politics and epistemology within the
memories linked to African-Atlantic colonialism and slavery. Are
contemporary performances of memory, particularly those that point to African
and Afro-diasporic alternatives to Euro-Western modes and models,
reflecting historico-political
and cognitive shifts in how the relationship between African-Atlantic
pasts, presents and futures is conceived?

The three-day international conference “Memory and Performance in
African-Atlantic Futures” seeks to approach these issues from a vigorously
cross-/inter-disciplinary perspective. We invite scholars, artists,
curators and other professionals within fields as varied as literature,
theatre and the performing arts, visual art, history, law, anthropology,
cultural studies, to engage in a conversation around the dynamics of memory
within the historical framework of African-Atlantic slavery and colonialism
and the political, aesthetic and epistemological specificities that they
engage in the current moment. We hope to underscore how these dynamics, too
often overlooked in the critical and theoretical sites of memory studies,
are currently shaping, reshaping and (re)mediating the global flows of
memory.



We propose two main axes of investigation:



*Shapes and forms of memory*

How do we think the forms and effects of the enfleshed, material memories
of slavery, colonialism and their afterlives and the ways in which these
are enlisted in the spaces of performance, be they physical (theatre,
dance, ritual, oral performance, etc.) or textual (the different
performative manifestations of the written word)?

This question necessarily involves a consideration of how African diaspora
time-senses fashion modes of performance of memory and how oral and ritual
performance forms impact, shape, record and encode memory in the context of
colonial violence. Can African and diasporic forms of embodied memory
become tools that combat imperialism? How can the performance of
post-slavery/ post-Empire memory shed new light on Western theories of
memory that emerge from Holocaust studies or on Western theories of
haunting, trauma and mourning?



*Epistemologies of memory*

What challenges do African diasporic modes of memory bring to Euro-Western
epistemologies of justice, History, and the human? How does postcolonial
memory call into question the social deployment of memory within the nation
and across nations? At a time when the movement for reparations for slavery
in the African diaspora is achieving unprecedented momentum, we invite
contributions that question settled understandings of the triad of time,
history and justice and those that address postcolonial engagements with
memory through “corrective” performance practices of justice,
“truth-telling” and witnessing. Additionally, in considering institutional
marginalization, suppression, and exclusion of postcolonial memories, we
seek contributions about practices that challenge the order of remembrance
in official commemorations, museums, schools, archives and discourses.





*Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:*



·      institutions of memory

·      memory and the law

·      memory and reparations

·      memory and colonial enlightenment

·      memory and ‘the human’

·      new ‘problem-spaces’ and memory

·      memory and futures

·      Vodou and futures

·      Black Speculative Arts Movement and futures

·      ritual performance and futures

·      decolonising memory

·      decolonising the museum

·      decolonising the curriculum

·      citation as a politics of memory



Presentations should last no longer than 20 minutes.



*Submission Guidelines*



Abstracts in English of *no more than 300 *words should be submitted
through our website (www.africanatlantic.net) by *Friday, 2 March 2018*.
Abstracts may be submitted by email to *[log in to unmask]
<[log in to unmask]>.* Please submit in PDF or Word format,
including the *title of the paper* and a *short biography*. ­­­­­­



We also welcome proposals for complete panels, which should consist
of 3 presenters. Panel proposals should not exceed 500 words and should be
accompanied by short biographies of each of the presenters.



The organising committee will communicate acceptance decisions no later
than 9 March 2018. Please consult the conference website
(*https://www.africanatlantic.net/
<https://www.africanatlantic.net/>*) where further details will be posted.



*Conference Conveners*



Dr. Jason Allen-Paisant (University of Leeds)

Prof. Maxim Silverman (University of Leeds)



*Confirmed Keynote Speakers*



Dr. Louise Bernard   (Museum of the Obama Presidential Center)

Prof. Lubaina Himid (University of Central Lancashire)

Prof. Tavia Nyong’o  (Yale University)

Prof. Adam Sitze (Amherst College)

Dr. Chokri Ben Chikha (Royal College of Fine Art, Ghent)



 Enquiries should be addressed to Dr. Jason Allen-Paisant (
*[log in to unmask]*) <[log in to unmask])>

-- 

Jason Allen-Paisant, D.Phil (Oxon).
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

School of Languages, Cultures and Societies &

Centre for World Literatures

University of Leeds, LS2 9JT Leeds, UK