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Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Conference, 24-26 August, 2011
Venue: Pan-African University, Lagos, Nigeria
Jointly organised by the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, UK and School of Media and Communication, Pan-African University, Lagos, Nigeria
Theme: “Myth and Modernity in African Literature”
Critics have long recognised the value of African literatures' representation of the mythic and the folkloric, but too often this recognition is based on an anthropological approach, where myth is seen as an expression of the pre-modern or pre-colonial. Not enough attention has been paid to the ways in which myth, through literature, can serve as a vital ingredient in the construction of the modern in Africa. Myth, legend, folklore, and appropriations from the oral tradition frequently serve to embed the imaginary in the historical, to anchor texts within communities, to allow writers to negotiate their places within a nascent African modernity. The theme of the 2010-2011 Fellowship programme allows scholars to explore these and other issues related to the persistence of myth in African literatures, and to consider in details their implications for our sense of Africa in the twenty-first century.

The conveners, Dr. Chris Warnes of the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Dr. James Tar Tsaaior of the School of Media and Communication, Pan-African University, Lagos, Nigeria invite abstracts and panel proposals around the theme of the conference with the following sub-themes:
Myth in Africa, Africa in myth: theoretical issues
Myth of modernity, modernity of myth in a glocalised order
Interfaces of myth and the oral arts in modern Africa
Myth, modernity and the construction of nationhood in Africa
Myth, modernity and the idea of Africa
Myth, modernity and the popular imagination in Africa
Media constructions of myth and the modern in Africa
Mythic (Mis)Representations of gender/sexuality in African literature
African literature and the myth of identity
Politics of Be/Longing: the myth of race/ethnicity in Africa
Religion and the mythic imagination in Africa
Myth, modernity and the written traditions 
Appropriations of myth in new media technologies in Africa
Myth and African Epistemologies 
Myth and the Institution
Abstracts and panel proposals of not more that 300 words should be sent to the following: Anuli Agina [log in to unmask] and Ijeoma Nwezeh - [log in to unmask] not later than 20 June, 2011. Visit www.smc.edu.ng for additional information.