Call for Papers: Saharan Crossroads: Views from the North June 6-8
2009, 06/09
Saharan Crossroads: Views from the North
Carrefour saharien: la vue du nord
AIMS/WARA Conference, Tangier
June 6 through 8, 2009
Africa has traditionally been viewed through a bifocal lens in which
the Sahara Desert has been perceived as an impenetrable barrier
dividing the continent into the northern "white" and sub-Saharan
"black" Africa. Despite trans-Saharan cultural contact spanning
centuries, the conceptual divide separating North and sub-Saharan
Africa remains strong. Countries to the north find themselves placed
in Mediterranean, Islamic, and Middle Eastern studies with little
consideration of cultural, historical, or artistic contact with
sub-Saharan countries, which are often considered more authentically
"African." Much scholarship has failed to recognize that
communication, correspondence, trade and travel has been going on for
several millennia, often in partnership with nomadic movements across
the Sahara. In fact, the arbitrary and removed perception of Africa
as separate zones may be growing. We seek to counteract this
tendency. Reality is and has been quite different. Contact among
traders, scholars, artisans, and nomads set the stage for the
emergence of richly diverse aesthetic expressions along the web of
North to South and East to West routes crossing the Sahara as well as
at their beginning and ending points. The Sahara and its peripheries
have been platforms of interconnected peoples and cultures.
Saharan Crossroads invites papers in the fields of art history,
literature, anthropology, folklore, cultural history, geography,
film, performing arts, and music addressing the methodological,
conceptual, stylistic or technical aspects of artistic creativity,
culture, and performance, both contemporary or historic, which
reflect the nature of this artistic discourse and illustrate how the
Sahara has been a porous boundary, a bridge rather than a barrier,
for the transmission and exchange of arts and culture through time.
Saharan Crossroads: Views from the North, the 2009 AIMS Conference,
is the first of a two-part conference. "Views from the South" will
take place a year later in Niamey, Niger.
A delegation of scholars from the West African Research Association
in Dakar (WARA) will participate in Views from the North. For Part
II in 2010, "Views from the South," we envision reversing these roles
so that WARA takes the lead, incorporating a delegation from AIMS.
In this way, the conferences should lead to new and enduring
scholarly linkages.
We underline the significance of Saharan Crossroads: Views from the
North's artistic and cultural theme of historical and contemporary
connections across Saharan space.
Themes to be considered may include, but are not restricted to:
- Historical Construction of the Sahara as a Barrier
- Behavioral, Geographic, and Conceptual Space of the Sahara
- Libraries and the Challenges of Archival Preservation
- Cultural Manifestations of Slavery in North Africa
- Sufi Brotherhoods and their Role in Cementing Relations Across
the Sahara
- The Sahara as a Geographic and Cultural Space of Amazighité
- Nomadic Cultures as Agents of Contact
- Saharan Oases as Zones of Cultural Contact
- Saharan Arts, Architecture, and Design
- Music and Performance in and across the Sahara
- Deconstructing North/South Identities: Artists' Roundtable
Paper proposals of one page, accompanied by a CV, should be submitted
electronically to WARA (wara@bu.edu) no later than February 1, 2009.
Priority for acceptance and funding will be given to scholars from
AIMS and WARA affiliate countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and the
18 countries comprising West Africa). Scholars from the US will
receive funding for hotel accommodations and a per diem.
Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.