This one-day international conference aims to investigate the literary, linguistic, artistic and cultural representations of African cosmologies, posing particular attention to the points of contact between the African continent and the Caribbean regions. This seminar will be of interest to scholars of African, Caribbean and Afro-American Literatures, Linguistics, Anthropology, Religious and Diaspora Studies.

Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Representations of alternative knowledge systems in literature (both in fiction and non-fiction), performance and the arts;
• Trauma narratives (historical trauma; collective trauma) and spirituality;
• African syncretic spiritual practices in the Caribbean: Santeria, Obeah, Vodou, etc.;
• The influence of spirituality and divination in African and Caribbean language systems;
• Decolonisation of language through the re-centralisation of non-Western linguistic structures and concepts;
• Otherness and marginalised non-Western discourses;
• African cosmologies and decolonial theory;
• African cosmologies and queerness;
• African cosmologies and ecocriticism;
• African cosmologies and the politics of identity in the diaspora.

Submission deadline: 15 July 2025