UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
Call for Papers: Pathways to Africa's Past, 04/01 2001

Call for Papers: Pathways to Africa's Past, 04/01 2001

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Pathways to Africa's Past"

Austin, Texas

Friday, March 30 to Sunday, April 1, 2001

** PROPOSAL DEADLINE EXTENDED TO NOVEMBER 1, 2000 **

We are pleased to announce a three-day conference centered on the theme of using diverse methods and sources to recreate and narrate African history and society from different perspectives. All interested scholars are welcome. Graduate students and advanced undergraduates are also invited, both to present papers and to participate in the workshop.

THEME STATEMENT

African history is written using many different sources and methods. Decades ago, Africanists played a crucial role in the development of oral history within the discipline. Today, Africanists are still at the forefront of incorporating new ideas into the historical method, drawing on ecological, medical, archaeological, literary, linguistic, and anthropological materials. These diverse sources and methods inform African history in fundamental ways, but they also sometimes foster a branching of the field into various sub-disciplines. The "Pathways to Africa's Past" conference will provide a space for Africanists to teach each other about their diverse interests, and to find common ground on which we might pose the questions for future research and writing.

MASTER WORKSHOP

As a featured event, Professor Paul Lovejoy will lead a "master workshop" open to all of the conference participants, centered on the theme of the conference. The workshop will be structured much like a graduate-level seminar, and will follow up issues raised by the papers presented during the conference.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

The Keynote Address will be delivered by Professor David Henige, whose forthcoming work deals with issues of historical evidence and argument. His current interests are particularly well-suited to the theme of the conference, and we look forward to his presentation.

PAPER PROPOSALS

Paper presentations should address issues of methods and sources from each scholar's area of expertise:for example, one might describe how a current project is built around looking at old questions using new sources; another might raise new questions using old or neglected sources. As much as possible, papers will be assigned to particular panels based on similarities in theme or location. Selected papers from the conference will be published in book form.

The deadline for submitting paper proposals is November 1, 2000. Proposals should include author's name and institutional affiliation, along with the paper title and a 250-word abstract. Please send all submissions via email to Toyin Falola at <toyin.falola@mail.utexas.edu> or to Christian Jennings at

<xianjen@mail.utexas.edu>.

**PLEASE, FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR COLLEAGUES AND GRADUATE STUDENTS



Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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