ALA Conference 2026: New Horizons in African Literatures and Film: Cityscapes, Mediascapes, and Ideoscapes
University of Tennessee, Knoxville May 28-30, 2026
Abstract submission via the conference app EXTENDED DEADLINE: December 19, 2025
The ALA 2026 theme, “New Horizons in African Literatures and Film: Cityscapes, Mediascapes, and Ideoscapes” covers developments in African literature from the “village text” to the New Diasporic writing.
The conference theme envisions two tracks: a) taking stock of critical developments in African literature and expressive cultures in the last half century; and b) a rethinking of the new horizons already being mapped by African literature, film, and attendant scholarship as we begin the second half century of African literature scholarship that is no longer weighed down by tokenism, mislabeling as ethnography, or the assumption that the African writer is only a short distance runner.
African literature is vast and varied, rural and urban, continental and diasporic, rooted and mobile, oral and written, analogue and digital. It is part of the ongoing weaving of culture across time and space, threaded together with soundscapes, foodways, fashion, and more. The theme thus revisits in part Arjun Appadurai’s discussion of “mediascapes,” “ethnoscapes,” “ideoscapes,” and the other distinct “flows” that ceaselessly sweep through the world in ways that disrupt center-periphery models while challenging national boundaries and meaning-making. The concepts of “imagined worlds” and “deterritorialization” speak to the ways Africa and its literatures are being incorporated in these “ceaseless flows.” While the “village novel” has been covered thoroughly, there is a growing lode of African writing that represents the village transplants in school settings, the emerging African city, as well as new urban generations and their cultures. There is also an increasing need to extend the exploration to the transplants not only in the West, but also in emerging destinations like China, the Middle East, or Australia. Such new routes have been traced by the likes of Losambe and Ojaide’s venture into the New Diasporic Writing (2024) or the Afropeans. New dimensions are emerging as the latter transplants bring with them foods, music, dress, hairstyling etc., and in turn create a corresponding flow of mediascapes and ideoscapes back to African spaces. The new horizon of African literature online, whether in online journals or on social media platforms, calls for reflection on the emerging technoscapes that might answer Teju Cole’s provocative question whether African digital “natives” wear glass skirts.
What new frontiers are African creative artists mapping that “reworld” Africa and position Africa(ns) in deterritorialized imagined worlds? What intermedial connections are they making? What affiliative networks are they tapping into? What role do the prestigious literary prizes play? What are the challenges of creating an archive of such reworlding?
We invite proposals and panels that seek to engage with these topics:
- Music in/and African fiction, drama, and film
- African literature and sound studies
- African literature and (ethno)musicology
- Music and political struggle in African literature
- Digital platforms (social media, podcasting and online spaces) and literature
- Transmutations, transmediations, and literature
- Creative graffiti, graphic narratives of resistance, graphic writing and literature
- Cartographies of food in African arts
- African TV programs in diasporic spaces
- African digital village squares
- Virality vs art in online media
- Deterritorialization in African arts and film
- The margins in African literature
- Hair, storytelling, aesthetics and politics
- Reworlding Africa
- Seascapes and literature
- Text and texture
- Flexible citizenship.
The EXTENDED deadline for all proposals (individual abstracts and fully-formed panels) is Monday, December 19, 2025.
Please submit your abstracts via the Whova portal: https://tinyurl.com/mspkxhr9
Please note that participant names may only appear twice in the conference schedule. This includes participation in panels, round tables and the like. Submit your abstract early if you plan to apply for a visa to attend the conference.
Submission Notes
NOTE 1: If you are making more than one submission (e.g. to chair a panel & to present and individual paper; to present two individual papers), please submit two separate Call for Speaker forms.
NOTE 2: For Individual paper submissions, please do not write in the 'Panel Chairs', 'Panel Speakers', or 'Roundtable Speakers' fields.
NOTE 3: For panel or roundtable submissions, please pay close attention to the instructions on the form, which say where to enter your information.
For further inquiries contact ala2026@africanlit.org