Senegambian Studies Group sponsored panels at ASA 2020
senegambianstudies
Dear Senegambian Studies Group members:
It is that time of year when we need to think of panel and paper proposals for the 2020 ASA meeting. This year it is scheduled November 19-21 in Washington, DC.
As before, the Senegambian Studies Group is allowed to submit sponsored panels. Please see below my signature for information on two panels proposed by the board. You can also find a Word doc with this information at: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AjrzvQs0md5Rsetd-NUvVXgfAQNAtw?e=xisvmM
If you want to propose a different panel or participate in one of the below panels, please email Babacar Mbaye (bmb...@kent.edu) or me (ihu...@gmu.edu) as soon as possible. The submission deadline to the ASA is March 15, and we would like to have the panels finalized before then. We therefore ask that you email us no later than March 5 if you want to participate.
Please also spread the word of these panels through your personal networks.
Best wishes,
Niklas
Niklas
Hultin, LLM, PhD
Assistant Professor
Global Affairs Program
George Mason University
Editor (Briefings and Reviews), African Conflict and Peacebuilding
Review, https://www.jstor.org/journal/africonfpeacrevi
Secretary-General, Senegambian Studies Group
Call for Paper Abstracts for Panels to be Sponsored by the Senegambian Studies Group
For the 2020 African Studies Association Conference in Washington D.C.
Panel Proposal
Title of Panel: Local and Global Dimensions of Senegambian Popular Cultures: Music, Literature, and other Traditions
Panel Organizer: Dr. Babacar Mbaye; Professor; Kent State University; 113 Satterfield Hall; Tel: 330-672-1742; Email: bmb...@kent.edu
Panel Chair: If you want to serve as the Chair of this panel, please give your name, rank, institutional address, phone number, and email address here.
Building on the groundbreaking scholarship spearheaded by works such as Fallou Ngom’s essay, “Popular Culture in Senegal: Blending the Secular and the Religious” (2012), Toyin Falola and Augustine Agwuele’s book, Africans and the Politics of Popular Culture (2009), and Karin Barber’s monograph, A History of African Popular Culture (2018), among others, this panel invites papers which examine the neglected and rich popular cultures of Senegambia, including this vast region’s music, literature, and other traditions. While papers focusing on the relationships between Senegambian musical, literary, and other traditions and their parental cousins of the black diaspora are encouraged, others which center on different aspects of Senegambian cultures are also invited. Having such a broad and multidisciplinary scope will enable this panel to have substantial intellectual conversations on thematic inquiries, theories, approaches, and methodologies that can help to uncover both the connections between transatlantic black popular cultures and their Senegambian cousins and equivalents. This type of research in which an increasing number of scholars are participating deserves attention, especially due to the needed research on the ties between black transatlantic musical cultures such as blues, reggae, hip-hop, dancehall, other genres, and African music. Such relationships can only be understood when the social, cultural, and historical contexts that gave rise to Senegambian and black diasporan popular cultures and literary traditions are properly and comprehensively examined.
Title of Your Paper:
First and Last Names of the Presenter:
Title and Rank of the Presenter:
Institutional Address:
Email address of Presenter:
Telephone Number of Presenter:
Abstract of Your Paper: Please describe the goal and nature of your paper’s abstract in 200 words.
Note: Please send this form with all your information to the specific panel organizer’s email address mentioned above by the end of March 10. The panel organizer will submit the proposal and abstracts of each panel to the ASA’s days before the March 15 deadline that the ASA gives.
Panel Proposal
Title of Panel: Politics of Greater Senegambia: Uses of History and Directions for the Future
Panel Organizer: Dr. Niklas Hultin, Assistant Professor, Global Affairs Program, George Mason University, Tel: ihu...@gmu.edu.
Panel Chair: If you want to serve as the Chair of this panel, please give your name, rank, institutional address, phone number, and email address here.
This panel invites papers that address the politics of the greater Senegambian region, understood as encompassing Senegal and The Gambia as well as Guinea-Bissau, Conakry, and southern Mauritania. Inspired by the conference theme of “Hour of Decision,” the panel is intended to explore the political structures and processes that are poised to shape the region’s history in the near term, especially as a region. Decision implies the potential for change, or at least a need to pick one future amongst many possibilities, but such decisions are path-dependent. We are thus interested in papers that explore both the enduring legacy of the past, but also the ways visions of the future (of development, religious harmony, stability, and so forth) are articulated in the present as either continuations or breaks with the past—along the lines Piot (2010) describes as a “nostalgia for the future” in Togo, for example. Furthermore, these processes and structures might be formal ones such as elections or bilateral agreements; for example, there have been recent (in 2019) presidential elections in Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Mauritania, and controversial legislative elections and a referendum are scheduled for 2020 in Guinea-Conakry. (While the next Gambian election is not until 2021, the reverberations of the Gambia’s transition to democracy are ongoing). Or they could be infrastructural, as in the recently inaugurated trans-Gambian bridge that is supposed to usher in a new relationship between Senegal and the Gambia. But we are equally interested in processes that might be at least in part outside of formal politics but nonetheless have a profound impact on them, such as religious groups (whether indigenous to the region or not) and diasporas.
Piot, Charles. 2010. Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Title of Your Paper:
First and Last Names of the Presenter:
Title and Rank of the Presenter:
Institutional Address:
Email address of Presenter:
Telephone Number of Presenter:
Abstract of Your Paper: Please describe the goal and nature of your paper’s abstract in 200 words.
Note: Please send this form with all your information to the specific panel organizer’s email address mentioned above by the end of March 10. The panel organizer will submit the proposal and abstracts of each panel to the ASA’s days before the March 15 deadline that the ASA gives.