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Call for papers: "Afrotopias"
5th Global Africas, Winthrop-King Institute For Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, April 2025
In his 2016 essay Afrotopia, Senegalese scholar Felwine Sarr posits the African continent of the 21st century as poised to become “an active utopia” that engages critically with the past and draws extensively on and cultivates Africa’s own indigenous resources, both natural and cultural.
While Felwine Sarr’s propositions are future-oriented and seek to affect change worldwide through changes on the continent, this interdisciplinary conference asks what other kinds of Afrotopias have been imagined and created while also attending to who is responsible for the realization of such Afrotopias and who or what generates “insurmountable” obstacles to their actualization and maintenance. Key questions include: Is Afrotopia always for everyone? What distinguishes an Afrotopia from an Afro(dis)topia? What do Afrotopias reveal about structures of power? When and where have representations of Afrotopias emerged? What do the similarities and differences between Afrotopias generated on the continent and outside of it teach us?
Proposals of 250-300 words for 20-minute presentations have to be sent by 25 November 2024. Panel proposals of 3-4 presentations are also encouraged.
