This year’s theme, Shifting Epistemologies: Movements, Institutions and Ideas in Africa, invites participants to reflect on election, migration, resistance and innovation trends that have taken shape on the continent and in the African diaspora. Abstracts due 12 Feb. In recent years, the continent and world at large has experienced a wave of migration and African local and national boarders shoulder the responsibility of accepting most of those who flee their homes and communities. Concurrently, student movements in South Africa, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, and the continent more broadly are challenging institutional hegemony, adumbrating a larger discontent with power and militancy, and more immediately Zimbabweans are questioning the early celebration of a bloodless coup said to be completely within the limits of the constitution. New frameworks of knowing emerge in these spaces where over time Western epistemology has become insufficient in addressing shifts in African political, cultural, technological, linguistic, race, and ethnic relations
This year’s conference is, therefore, geared towards profoundly contemplating the ramifications of these manifestations. Participants may explore any of the following subthemes:
Political Shifts
Challenging Epistemology
Language and Culture
New Media
Narrative and Space
Institutional Hegemony
Resistance Movements
Politics of Bodies
Popular Culture
Refugees, Dislocation and Displacement
Memory, Violence and Representation
Challenging Silence
We solicit abstracts (of no longer than 250 words) for papers that engage with the above topics and related concerns. Please include your name, email, institutional affiliation and audio/visual needs in your email, not on your abstract, to enable a blind review. We encourage submissions in English and African languages.
Email your abstract to acssa.conference@gmail.com by Monday, 12th February 2018.