ACASA Triennial Conference: Call for Panel and Roundtable Proposals
Passages: Transmission, Circulation, and the Visual Across African Worlds
Rabat, Morocco
We invite proposals for panels and roundtables at this time (September 1 to November 1, 2026). A call for individual papers for open panels and participation in open roundtables will follow on December 1, 2026.
Key Dates
- Panel and Roundtable Proposals: Opens September 1, 2026; Closes November 1, 2026
- Individual Papers: Opens December 1, 2026; Closes January 15, 2027
- Fully Constituted Panels/Individual Papers Approved and Assigned: February 1, 2027
About the Theme
Passages is not only about where things travel. It is about what happens to them on the way. This theme organises the conference around movement as a condition rather than a subject: the routes, exchanges, and crossings that have shaped African visual cultures across time, and the questions of who carries knowledge, who receives it, and what transforms in transit. It invites scholarship that reframes canonical works and movements, ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary, through the lens of circulation rather than origin, asking not where an object or practice began, but what it has done as it moved.
To hold this conference in Rabat is part of the theme rather than incidental to it. Morocco sits at the intersection of trans-Saharan, Atlantic, and Mediterranean circuits, its capital shaped by Amazigh, Arab, Andalusian, and European traditions in the demanding work of encounter.
We Welcome Contributions on Themes Such As:
- Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean exchange of objects, forms, and iconographies in precolonial and early modern periods
- Diasporic feedback loops between continent and elsewhere
- The mobility of African aesthetics through fashion, music, and design
- Digital platforms as new circuits of transmission, with their own distortions and gatekeepers
- The politics of scholarly transmission: which voices have been amplified or suppressed, which languages granted authority, and what it means to produce and receive knowledge across linguistic, institutional, and geographic borders
- Reframings of canonical works, regardless of where periodisation has placed them, through circulation rather than origin
- Cross-period pairings of scholars working on ancient and contemporary material around shared methodological questions
- Multilingual scholarly practice and the politics of periodisation
This list is meant to be suggestive and not exhaustive. We especially welcome panels and roundtables that do not directly reflect the Theme, and submissions on any topic beyond the core theme are also encouraged. We also welcome proposals for alternative formats.
Format
Regular panels will be 120 minutes long with either a) four 20-minute papers and a discussant, or b) five 20-minute papers. 90-minute roundtables or alternative discussion-based formats (such as lightning talks or poster presentations) are welcome; creativity encouraged.
Participants may only present one paper but may serve as a discussant on another panel or as a presenter on a roundtable. Proposals for panels and roundtables may be open, with a suggested topic, or fully constituted, with all proposed participants identified. Participation may be in person, virtual, or a combination of the two.
Panel and Roundtable Proposals Must Include the Following:
- A proposed title
- Name, professional title, and affiliation of the chair(s)
- An abstract not to exceed 100 words, to be published on the ACASA Triennial website, ACASA Member Newsletter, ACASA social media channels
- If fully constituted, the names, titles, and affiliations of all proposed participants
- Contact information of the chair(s), including email (for internal use only; this will not be publicized)
The submission deadline for panel and roundtable proposals is November 1, 2026.
Please submit via the submission portal: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXpLG-QFOHvyhtic3VPxya_1o6oZCpeX4kuJVxvIsxMI-h_Q/viewform?usp=header
Panel, roundtable, and paper proposals may be submitted by anyone, but an active ACASA membership is required to take part in the symposium. Visit https://www.acasaonline.org/join-acasa/ for information on membership and to join.
For any questions or concerns, please email ACASA Admin Caroline Bastian at bastian@acasaonline.org