The 5th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference
Theme: Postcolonial African Cities at 60: Continuities and Discontinuities
June 22-26, 2021
Lagos, Nigeria
The concept of postcolonialism is dominant in African studies for one principal reason—its flexibility at a temporal, theoretical, historical, and spatial level. While many thinkers regard the postcolonial as a period thoroughly disengaged from imperialism, others view it as a series of responses, contestations, and critiques that throw into sharp relief colonialism’s most gruesome atrocities. Yet, others consider it an unending circulation of colonial knowledge and practices in postcolonial societies. Thus, coloniality is deeply implicated in the postcolonial. Serious attention to comparative postcolonial cities promises to track how different African urban spaces have evolved from their precolonial and colonial incarnations. The globalization of urban institutions and governance, the remaking of the city by urbanites, and the efflorescence of hybrid identities that borrow from multiple sites of knowledge and power characterize postcolonial African cities. Yet, the postcolonial African city defies easy definition, even as African countries enter their 6thdecade of independence in 2020.
This 5thedition of the annual LSA conference seeks to place the postcolonial at the center the African city, and ask how the concept shapes our framing of African urban locations in their physical, imaginative, spatial, and theoretical dimensions. We seek to move beyond the simplistic dialectic that the city is either a measure of development or decay in postcolonial Africa; instead, we would like to engage provocative ideas about people, institutions, narratives, and practices that make each urban location unique, without ignoring the shared histories and experiences of African cities.
What is postcolonial about African cities since the 1960s? How have African cities evolved from their colonial past? Is there any correlation between decolonization on the one hand, and urban governance, artistic expressions, identity formations, and countless of other manifestations of daily existence, on the other? Why might the city form the basis of intellectual engagements within the expansive narratives of postcolonial state and nation-building? In what ways can the rhetoric of political, cultural, or epistemological decolonization improve our knowledge of African cities? How are cities that emerged since the 1960s different or similar to those with roots in precolonial and colonial eras? Did the postcolonial state engender a unique type of city or urbanization process?
We welcome abstracts from academic and nonacademic practitioners working on any African urban location and across the following fields and themes, among others:
African feminisms
African philosophies of urbanism
Architecture
Arts, musical culture, and performance
Atlantic connections
Childhood and youth identities
Cinema, films, Nollywood
Civil society and activism
Civil war and reconstruction
Conflict resolution, peace-keeping, and security
Cyber culture, social media, and digital representation
Decolonizing the African city
Dictatorship and military rule
Ecocritical readings of African urbanism
Economic and fiscal policies
Education and literacy
Ethnicity and inter-group relations
Futurity and temporalities
Globalization and transnationalism
Health and healing
Heritage, archeology, material culture, and museums
Inequality and class conflict
Infrastructure and urban planning
Knowledge systems and philosophy
Labor, employment, business, and entrepreneurship
Language, literature, and orality
Media, popular culture, and self-fashioning
Mobility and transportation
Nature conservation and environment
Oil and mineral extraction
Photography and digital imaging
Politics, electoral process, political parties
Queer studies and African sexualities
Religion and urbanism
Shipping, maritime history, piracy, and port studies
Space and place-making
Spirituality and religious identities
Theorizing African cities
Urban animals and zoocritical perspectives
Urban anthropology and sociology of everyday life
Urban governance and planning
Women, gender, and sexualities
–Among others
Please note that call for abstract has closed. We are not accepting new submissions.
If you have any question about the conference, contact LSA at:
Email Address: lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com
Website: https://lagosstudies.wcu.edu/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/groups/205111409881162/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/LagosStudies