Ecologies of Transition: Spaces and Mobilities in African Literatures and Cultures
Nairobi, Kenya June 25-28, 2025
EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: Monday December 2, 2024
This conference, marking the 50th anniversary of the formation of the African Literature Association (ALA), explores the ways in which African writers reconceive movement and place. Often, narratives about Africans on the move, particularly migrant Africans, reflect a tension between motion and stasis. Such tensions highlight the often-unsettling narrative transitions that characterize recent poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction from Africa and the diaspora. While narratives like NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names depict the exigencies of forced removal, others, like Fatou Diome’s Belly of the Atlantic describe identities and situations in flux. As Jack Taylor and Eleni Coundouriotis have pointed out, depictions of Africans in motion often open up a wide range of imaginative possibilities for African literature and film, ranging from post conflict restorations to redefinitions of space. Many narratives feature multiple time frames, charged settings, circular narratives, transformed spaces, and resilient landscapes.
Spatial, temporal and ecological transitions within African narrative spaces will be the focus of this conference. This includes narratives depicting communities in flux, families enduring forced migration, and the horrors of sex trafficking, as well as identities formed in mobile spaces, individuals moving within magical time frames, and resilient and resistant social relationships.
We invite proposals for panels and roundtables that investigate narrative transitions across times, spaces, modalities and communities. We are especially interested in the following topics, but welcome a broad range of proposals that analyze:
- mobilities and technologies in African literatures
- migratory imaginaries in African literatures
- postmigration narratives and temporality
- the space of African social media
- emergent African literature
- ecological spaces and African literatures
- Futurism/Afrofuturism in African literatures
- African LGBTQI+ identities then and now
The submission portal is now open HERE.
We also encourage proposals on any other topic related to African literature and culture. The deadline for all proposals (abstracts and panels) is Monday, December 2, 2024. Please also note that participant names may only appear twice in the conference schedule. This includes participation in panels, round tables and the like.
This conference will be held in person only. There are no options for virtual participation.
For further inquiries contact alaconf2025@gmail.com
The African Literature Association