AAC - Beyond the Monumental: Hybrid Traces, Urban Memories, and Contested Heritages in West African Cities - African Studies Association 69th Annual Meeting - New Orleans, December 3-6, 2026

[Respatrimoni Network]

Dans le cadre de l’appel à communication du 69e congrès de l’African Studies Association (3-6 décembre 2026), nous souhaitons vous faire parvenir un appel à communication pour un panel intitulé « Beyond the Monumental: Hybrid Traces, Urban Memories, and Contested Heritages in West African Cities ». 

N’hésitez pas à contacter Rémi Jenvrin et Jules Garine Wichatitskysi vous souhaitez obtenir des précisions complémentaires. 

Les propositions de communication, rédigées en langue anglaise, d’une longueur de 300 mots, devront être envoyées avant le 15 février, aux adresses suivantes : jules.garin...@unige.ch ; remi.j...@univ-paris1.fr 

Call for papers for a panel at the African Studies Association 69th Annual Meeting, Rupture and Remake: African Possibilities in a Shifting World | New Orleans, LA December 3-6, 2026

Beyond the Monumental: Hybrid Traces, Urban Memories, and Contested Heritages in West African Cities

Convenors : Jules Garine-Wichatitsky (Université de Genève, GSI, Lettres) and Rémi Jenvrin (CNRS, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Prodig)

West African cities are vibrant laboratories of layered memories, where material, cultural, practical, and environmental traces of the past coexist, hybridize, and sometimes clash. Cities themselves are spaces of conflicts between a “precolonial” past, the remnants of colonial intervention or developmental constraints shaped by rapid urbanization and dynamic demographics. Objects and vestiges such as colonial architecture (administrative, productive, or habitat), environmental formations (gardens, sacred forests), and archaeological vestiges deserve to be analyzed as repositories of a multitude of memories. Moving away from a solely state perspective on heritage, we seek to discuss and emphasize counter-memories enacted by a variety of publics, both national and foreign, autochthonous or allochthonous, elite and non-elite...

This variety of both material traces and stakeholders should help us identify fluctuating balances of power through the use of multidisciplinary experiences. Varying lenses such as socio-economic class, identity groups, conflicting political and economic interests, scale of analysis, or an attention to time can help deepen our understanding of the past in West African cities.

Through concrete case studies and work-in-progress presentations, we invite contributors to engage with (but not exclusively) the following themes:

• Power dynamics that shape heritage processes. Contributions that engage with the diversity of actors negotiating the value and visibility of these traces (local communities, states, NGOs, diasporas) will be particularly welcome.

• Meanings and uses of these heritage sites. Analysis of ruptures and remaking of everyday practices and/or events linked to urban pasts (whether tangible or intangible).

• Innovative fieldwork methodologies that capture these dynamics without essentializing identities or overlooking minority narratives.

You can send your 200-300 word abstract to jules.garin...@unige.ch and

 remi.j...@univ-paris1.fr before the 15th of February.