Call for Papers: "African Studies in the New Millenium" Volume

June 18, 1996

A Call for Papers for a Proposed Edited Volume on Teaching Africa: African Studies in the New Millenium

Jane Parpart and Misty Bastian would like to invite participants in NUAFRICA to submit short essays, around 2,500 words or 8-10 manuscript pages, on topics relating to teaching African Studies in the nineties and beyond, for possible inclusion in a volume to be published by Heinemann. The volume would be reasonably priced, accessible and targeted toward university and high school teachers in the advanced grades. Your essays should therefore be personal, personable, and directly engage as well as challenge current pedagogical practices in the presentation of Africa to university students and others. We are particularly interested in full descriptions of pedagogical methods that work for you: small group discussion formats, how to lead classes in talking about film/video, role playing in the classroom, etc. Descriptions of actual projects, particularly projects that others among us might be able to replicate without too many elaborate preparations, would be very welcome. Some other, possible topics for consideration might be:

* Peopling African landscapes (that is, subverting the dominant National Geographic paradigm of Africa as land of wildlife and little else; better introducing our students to African urban histories, for example)

* Human/Social diversity in the continent (alerting our students and interested others to the multiplicity of African peoples, histories, and societies)

* Presentation of gender in African contexts (i.e. going beyond debates about female circumcision or women as "beasts of burden;" discussion of African masculinities as well as continental women's issues)

* The challenge of Afrocentrism for African Studies (bringing this critical discourse into a closer conjunction with African and Africanist discourses; helping to make for, at least, interesting engagements with Afrocentric thought in relation to our studies of continental societies)

* Teaching economics and development issues in Africa in such a way as to take recent transformations in global economies into better account (showing our students how African economies are already intrinsically linked into global economies through practices of consumption, international aid projects and various countries' relations with multinational corporations; for example, the "Africa One" project currently underway, where fiber optic cable is being laid around the entire perimeter of the continent in order to offer select countries better access to the internet and other phone services)

* Integrating contemporary African Diasporas into our African Studies courses and programs (e.g. looking at African immigrations through their many cultural productions, notably print media, the importing of African fashions and "tourist art," Africans on the internet and the WWW)

* Making effective use of primary source materials and other data sources in the classroom (for instance, the use of locally produced newspapers or newsmagazines to introduce our students to African understandings of "current issues," both on a global and a local scale)

* Using multimedia resources in our teaching of African Studies (a guide to Web resources on Africa and how to use them effectively in our courses would be very useful, as an example).

* All other suggestions welcomed!

If you are interested in participating is such a volume, please email us at:

PARPART@ac.dal.ca
or
M_Bastian@acad.fandm.edu

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Message-Id: <v01530515adecc50c4390@[155.68.13.12]> Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 16:43:17 -0400 From: M_Bastian@ACAD.FANDM.EDU (Misty Bastian) Subject: Call for Papers