CALL FOR PAPERS The 21st Afrikanistentag 2014 will take place on 10 & 11 of June 2014 in Bayreuth. Conference languages are English and German. This is a cordial invitation
for participation and a call for registration of contributing papers.
The pening Lecture by Anne Storch (Köln) and Friederike Lüpke (London)
commences the conference on African languages, literatures and history. Furthermore, two open forums for discussion are planned on the topics of "Languages
in the New Technologies and in the Media" and “Applied Afrikanistik”.
In addition, two thematic panels – Popular Culture and Translocality and
Translating (and transferring) Africa – are scheduled. Further contributions to
africanist topics are very welcome.
Please send your abstract until 31st of March 2014 to [email protected] and – if applicable – to the respective panel convenor (for further
information on the panels please refer to the attachments 1 and 2).
We also like to point out that from 8th to 11th of June 2014 – partly overlapping
with the Afrikanistentag – the 27th Swahili Colloquium takes place in Bayreuth;
focusing on the theme of “Swahili and New Media and Technologies”. In
addition, within the Swahili-Colloquium in Bayreuth, on the occasion of the 20th
anniversary of the journal “Swahili Forum”, a symposium on the topic of New
Dynamics in Swahili Studies is scheduled in cooperation with Leipzig University.
For
further
information,
please
visit:
http://www.afrikanistik.unibayreuth.de/en/colloq/swahili_colloq/index.html.
Following the Afrikanistentag, in the week of Pentecost 2014, the conference of
the African Studies Association Germany (VAD) will take place in Bayreuth on
the theme of Future Africa (www.vad-ev.de). Alternatively to a full participation
in the entire VAD-conference, it is also possible to buy a day ticket for the Thursday programme. For queries about the programme or further information please
contact the VAD-coordinator Dr. Doris Löhr: [email protected]. ATTACHMENT 1
Popular Culture and Translocality – Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Africa
and its Diaspora (University of Vienna)
Panel convenors:
Birgit Englert, Department of African Studies, University of Vienna
Katharina Fritsch, Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Vienna
In recent decades new means of transportation, communication and media and the resulting
increased physical and virtual mobility, have led to the emergence or growth of translocal
spaces. Not only Africans in the diaspora create in their engagement with local realities specific
spaces that are defined by translocality, but also Africans on the continent itself are involved in
the creation of such spaces in which popular culture often plays a crucial role. We take popular
cultural practices to encompass not only artistic genres such as as literature, music, film,
theatre, dance and visual arts, but also cultural practices relating for example to the body, food
or sports.
In this panel we welcome both: papers which examine the role of popular culture in the
constitution of translocal spaces in Africa and the diaspora, as well as papers which offer an
analysis of how translocal spaces are addressed in popular culture. Discussions of these issues
tend to be most often focused on contemporary processes. We therefore especially welcome
also papers which look at these phenomena from a more historical perspective in order to allow
for comparative discussion.
______________________________
Mag. Dr. Birgit Englert
Assistant Professor
Department of African Studies
University of Vienna
[email protected]
Mag. Katharina Fritsch, BA
PhD Candidate
Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Vienna
[email protected]
ATTACHMENT 2
Translating (and transferring) Africa (Bayreuth University)
Panel convenors:
Hector Kamden ([email protected]) (Junior fellow, BIGSAS), Serena Talento
([email protected]) (Junior Fellow, BIGSAS), Uchenna Oyali ([email protected])
(Junior Fellow, BIGSAS).
In the wake of the “translational turn” (Bachmann-Medick 2009) which has been shacking cultural studies since the end of the 1990s, translation is regarded as being at the centre of inter2 cultural action. Within the African context, where more than 2000 indigenous languages are
spoken, translation and interpreting become an everyday activity which involves both the local
and the erstwhile colonial languages. The Nigerian scholar Ojo-Ade underscores the perpetual
state of translation in which the African writer and the African (wo)men on the whole are
embedded while asserting that “On the whole one may safely say that the dual culture of the
African writer (the native culture he is writing about and the European culture he has imbibed)
makes him first and foremost a translator before being a creative artist” (Ojo-Ade 1986: 295).1
Historically, translation on the African continent has been the site of construction or erasure of
cultural differences, asymmetrical power relationships, scopes of action, and a place where the
image of Africa has been constructed and deconstructed vis-à-vis a global context. At the end
of the Conference on African Languages and Literatures held in Asmara, Eritrea in January
2000, the Conference delegates, in what is now known as The Asmara Declaration, identified
the ‘profound incongruity in colonial languages speaking for the continent’ and then called for
Africa to ‘firmly reject this incongruity and affirm a new beginning by returning to its
languages and heritage’. The multilingualism and multiculturalism of contemporary Africa and
the forced historical encounters with multiple others, as well as the interplay between localism
and globalism have made translation the lens of intra- and inter-cultural contacts.
In this panel, we want to investigate how translation reflects the variegated African experiences
within and across different African art forms. We adopt a concept of translation that goes beyond the transfer of linguistic structures to encompass any transfer of information and meaning
within or across different art forms like poetry, drama, prose, music, painting, drawings, films.
The proposed papers should aim to deepen the understanding of how these transfers, on the one
hand, reflect the African socially and historically situated circumstances and, on the other hand,
in what way they can be a potent agent of change for (re)creating Africa.
Papers can address the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
How is the transfer of meaning and knowledge negotiated, adapted, re-configured,
manipulated or resisted within the African context?
How is meaning translated across different African art forms and across different
African languages?
What role has the translator’s (active/passive) agency in determining the transfer?
How is the translator’s/transferer’s dilemma towards the source text or towards the
audience managed?
To what extent has translation contributed to the development or suppression of African
languages and literatures?
How does translation as a discursive practice converse with or opposes other discursive
practices in which different political, social and cultural institutions are steeped?
How is Africa represented in translations between African languages and European
languages, and in translations amongst different African languages? To what extent has
translation served to construct the image of the self and of the other?
How do cross-cultural modes of reasoning affect the crafting of monolingual
texts/discourses?
How is the translation of all forms of code-mixing and code switching in different
textual and media typologies (film, literature etc.) undertaken?
Please send your abstract to one of the panel convenors mentioned above.
1
Ojo-Ade, Femi. “The Role of the Translator of African Literature in Intercultural. Consciousness and
Relationships.” Meta 31.3 (1986):291-299.
3