Call for Papers: Rethinking Africa and the Atlantic World, 09/09

Call for Papers

Rethinking Africa and the Atlantic World
3-6 September 2009, Stirling, Scotland

This conference combines the annual meeting of the British Group in Early American History with an event to mark the retirement of Prof. Robin Law, and is hosted by the Department of History at the University of Stirling.

Once a welcome and integrative response to the challenge of fragmentation, Atlantic history has often struggled to reconcile and accommodate subfields and disciplines, especially at the loose margins of its geographic range. There is a sense that it has talked the talk but not always walked the walk. On the one hand the core synthetic narrative has been quite selective, predictable, and unresponsive in its interaction with new scholarship in peripheral areas. On the other, new research has too often assumed connectivity, by virtue of the historiographical Atlantic turn, without fully addressing difficult questions of orientation, contingency, perspective, and comparative context. As a growing chorus of scepticism challenges the maturing (and perhaps declining) field of Atlantic history, this year's conference considers how relevant the model continues to be, and in what ways it might be adapted to retain intellectual vitality and pedagogical usefulness.

In particular, the theme of the conference invites participants to rethink Africa and the Atlantic world. The significance of West Africa to the field of Atlantic history is well established, primarily through its furnishing of slaves to European traders. Ironically in light of its severing effects on individual lives, the African slave trade represents one of the connective engines of the Atlantic world, for instance linking oceanic commercial networks or colonial labour regimes, and facilitating important comparisons across nations, crops, and environments. Recent scholarship has proliferated on this subject, stimulated by disputes over Equiano's authenticity, the meaning of the Black Atlantic, the nature of the Middle Passage, and the anniversaries of abolition that have generated such popular interest and publication over the past two or three years. This conference hopes to sustain some of this scholarly momentum, and also to redirect it to areas where the significance of Africa to Atlantic history, or of the Atlantic to African histories, is less clear. Ultimately, the conference hopes to bring into conversation recent developments in Atlantic history, the history of the Americas, and African history, in order to identify new directions for scholarship and build on previous models. Some suggestive questions are appended below:

• What emerges if we apply the multicentrism that is supposedly ingrained in Atlantic history to Africans' highly competitive personal and communal environments?
• How comparable were Africans' experiences not only as slave sellers, but as buyers (of textiles, currencies, alcohol and guns) with other African ethno-linguistic groups, or with peoples on other Atlantic continents?
• Does the early modern Atlantic framework hinder moving "Beyond Blacks, Bondage, and Blame" (the title of a 2004 essay by Joseph C. Miller)?
• How do we account for the resilient character of pre-colonial African institutions (particularly social, economic, and political), and to what degree did they determine market behaviour?
• How should the position of Africa, the barrier (or conduit) between Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, be properly defined from the perspective of early modern empires?
• How differentiated were African identities in the Americas, and how rapidly did they erode with creolisation?

The aims of the conference are:

• To provide a platform for current and new research on the themes listed below
• To foster co-operation and interaction between historians of different fields, continents, time/historical periods and generations
• To provide an opportunity for graduate students and early career researchers to showcase their research
• To mark Prof. Law's contribution to African and Atlantic history

The conference committee welcomes all proposals on the history of Africa, the Atlantic and/or the Americas, and particularly those within the broad theme of the conference which address the following fields:

• Pre-colonial Africa (including the material basis of political power, warfare and society)
• Trans-Atlantic slave trade
• Slavery in Africa and the Americas
• Diasporic populations
• Imperialism
• Commercial networks
• Responses to colonialism
• Urban history

The committee also welcomes contributions which provide critical assessments of Prof. Law's work and contribution to African and Atlantic history.

The programme will include the annual Caroline Robbins lecture, to be delivered by Prof. Billy G. Smith (Montana State University), a range of keynote speakers from Africa, the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., a book-club session, the launch of Prof. Law's festschrift, and social activities in Stirling.

Prospective participants are invited to send in a 500-word abstract and brief cv with their contact details, preferably via e-mail, by 28 February 2009. Full details regarding the programme, registration fees, accommodation options and other arrangements will be provided in due course.

Please submit proposals or direct requests for additional information to:

Dr Ben Marsh – ben.marsh@stir.ac.uk<mailto:ben.marsh@stir.ac.uk> Dr Phia Steyn – m.s.steyn@stir.ac.uk<mailto:m.s.steyn@stir.ac.uk>

Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.