THE BLACK WORLD
INNERSpace:INNERCity::INTERAction:INTERNation
UNIVERSITY OF TOURS, FRANCE
THE COLLEGIUM FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN RESEARCH (CAAR)
APRIL 21 TO 24, 2005
CALL FOR PAPERS
CAAR 2005 calls for
papers and workshops which address the Black World. CAAR's focus on the Atlantic
interchange leads us to emphasize the links between disciplines like African
American Studies, Caribbean Studies, and African Studies. Interconnections must
be recognized. African Americans are the best-studied ethnic minority in the
world, and the theoretical and empirical understanding gained from this research
is relevant to ethnic and racial issues everywhere.
INNERSpace: The spiritual, inner world of self and soul
occupies spaces along and across the boundary lines of philosophy, religion,
science, and art. Let us have papers on the Faith of the Fathers. Let us have
papers on the Faith of the Mothers, too. Let us have papers that deal with the
African American knowledge of both the Bible and of the Holy Books of Africa.
Let us have papers that deal with the music which makes religion for those who
have no religion. Let us have papers that deal with the inner living of the
African American soul, psyche, and mind.
INNERCity: "Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked
question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the
difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They
approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately,
and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they
say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville;
or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am
interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To
the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word"--W.
E. B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Let us have papers that deal with
the innercity life of Harlem, Watts, Atlanta, Chicago, Paris, Brixton,
Berlin.
INTERAction: "Mutual or reciprocal
action or influence" expresses exactly one way of speaking of the relations of
black and white of African and American. In 1963, James Baldwin asked America to
"end the racial nightmare." Forty years on, what has become of the programs,
pleas and prayers of the Angelous, the Baldwins, the Davises, the Kings, the
Walkers, and the Xs? Is it time to reappraise the Sixties? Was "All Change" no
change? What kinds of interaction are now making the scene in the art, culture
and politics of the new African American?
INTERNation: In his introduction to West Africa Before Europe (1905), the
Ghanaian Casely Hayford summarized the importance of Edward Wilmot Blyden by
saying that his claim to "the esteem and regard of all thinking Africans rests
not so much upon the special work he has done for any particular people of the
African race, as upon the general work he has done for the race as a whole. The
work of men like Booker T. Washington and W. E. Burghart Du Bois is exclusive
and provincial in a sense. The work of Edward Wilmot Blyden is universal,
covering the entire race and the entire race problem." Was it fair to call
Washington and Du Bois provincial? Was Blyden universal only because he came
from the islands and not from the mainland? Let us have papers which address the
relationships between the nations of Africa, Europe and the Americas. Let us
have papers which, catching the intonations of voices at the margins as well as
at the centers, tell us what will be the intercontinental alignments of the next
fifty years.
As in the previous CAAR
conferences, the program committee welcomes papers that approach
African-American Studies from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective.
Workshops should have no more than eight slots. Since CAAR encourages
international cooperation, we would ask that workshop organizers either recruit
some of the participants from countries other than their own or leave at least
half of the slots open.
Proposals should
be as short and to the point as possible (no more than one page). All proposals
should include title of paper/workshop, a brief abstract, and should include
your name, institution/affiliation, address, telephone number, and email
address. Please send your proposals by EMAIL (with the text of the proposal
included in the email, NOT as an attachment).
If you wish to run a workshop, please submit your proposal by June 1,
2004. If you wish to give a paper, please submit your proposal by September 1,
2004.
Please send all proposals
to:
Christopher Mulvey, President of CAAR,
King Alfred's Winchester: [log in to unmask]
THE COLLEGIUM FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN
RESEARCH
