AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER - UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Call for papers: The Portuguese Atlantic: Africa, Cape Verde and Brazil, 07/05 Date and place: 6 July - 10 July 2005
The conference held at King's College in London in September 2004, entitled Creole societies in the Portuguese and Dutch colonial empires, focussed on the emergence of Creole societies in Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Conference proposed for Cape Verde will now shift the focus to the Atlantic.
Could this be called creolisation? The debate is a lively one with many Africanists hostile to the use of such a term. Yet 'hybridity' and 'creole identities' are widely accepted terms and receive much attention in the context of the Caribbean and America (North and South); they form a significant strand of the 'new' British imperial history and in the development of the concept of a 'shadow empire' in Portuguese historiography. In a wider context the Conference will also make a significant contribution to the urgent discussions - academic and practical - on identity, culture, nationalism, ethnicity and political power which are of critical importance in the twenty-first century. With some particular exceptions, this debate has largely taken place without much input from Africanists, as if the continent had little to contribute to the discussion of such issues.
This Conference aims to fill this gap by exploring African 'creole' societies and the communities with which they maintained contacts in the Americas. Questions such as how these societies developed, how issues of identity were negotiated and re-negotiated, what roles they played in economic, political, cultural and social histories of Africa, the US and Brazil and what lasting impact they have had, will be central to the Conference. The concept of a 'Black Atlantic' will be extended from its original focus on the Anglophone world to the Lusophone Atlantic and will look at the economic, cultural and social contacts maintained between Africa, the United States and Brazil, often using the 'creole' islands of the Atlantic as the conduits of migration and cultural exchange. | |
|
