Conference: African/Diaspora Migrations, Displacements and Movements – Histories, Politics and Poetics

International Conference 2019

 “African/Diaspora Migrations, Displacements and Movements: Histories, Politics, and Poetics”  is the third international conference on African and African Diaspora Studies organized at the Mecca of Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs).

The first international and inter/multidisciplinary conference at Howard University, “Africa and People of African Descent: Issues and Actions to Re-Envision the Future” (September 14-16, 2011, Howard University) echoed the International Year for People of African descent proclaimed by the U.N. in 2011. It gathered hundreds of local, national and international scholars, artists, journalists, film critics, activists, policy makers, NGOs, community organizers, and Human Rights Organizations to discuss the challenges of African and people of African descent, and the actions to take to re-envision the future of those people.

The second international and inter/multidisciplinary conference, “Pan Africanism and Negritude: Dialogues between Africa and the African Diaspora (Past, Present, Future)”(November 4-6, 2015, Howard University) was celebrated in the context of the initial year of the International Decade for People of African descents proclaimed by the United Nations for the period of 2015-2024. Again, the event gathered hundreds of local, national and international scholars, artists, journalists, film critics, activists, policy makers, NGOs, community organizers, and Human Rights Organizations to revisit the Pan Africanism and Negritude as paths for dialogues between Africa and the African Diaspora in order to face (the same) challenges whether they are in Africa or dispersed in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Oceania, Québec/U.S., etc.

As for the organization of the first two international and inter/multidisciplinary conferences, the third international and inter/multidisciplinary conference, “African/Diaspora Migrations, Displacements and Movements: Histories, Politics, and Poetics” (October 30 – November 1, 2019, Howard University), echoes both the U.N.’s Proclaimed Year (2011) and Decade for People of African descents (2015-2024), while it is an attempt also to weigh in the conversation about the recent non-banding Migration Pact of Marrakech (Morocco, December 10, 2018). In this context, this international conference aims to invite local, national and international scholars from all disciplines, students, artists, journalists, film(makers) critics, activists, policy makers, NGOs, community organizers, and Human Rights Organizations to address one of the most challenging and paradoxical human experience, i.e. African/diaspora migrations in a world self-defined as “global(ized)”. They are invited also to discuss, among other issues, the acute human rights crisis generated by the discriminatory laws on (African/Diaspora) migrations, or by the reproduction of the enslavement derived from the contemporary middle passage. Moreover, they will exchange/cross ideas about how races and cultures have a continuous influence on the politics of (im/e)migration or on the (im/e)migration as political project of phobia. Participants will analyze discourses on migrations are produced on a historical, social and ideological contexts and reveal the problematic representation of African/Diaspora in the construction of the identities and nations in Africa, Europe, the Americas (including Latin America, US, Québec, Canada), Asia, Oceania, etc.

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