The online registration for the Triennial conference in June 15-20, 2021 is open now!

You can register and pay here.

Closing Date: Monday 3 May 2021

The African Critical Inquiry Programme invites proposals from scholars and/or practitioners in public cultural institutions in South Africa to organise a workshop to take place in 2022. The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa.

ACIP Workshops are intended as annual occasions to identify and address critical themes, fundamental questions and pressing practical issues concerning public culture. For instance, Workshops might focus on particular notions and issues related to publics, visuality, museums and exhibitions, art, performance, representational forms, or institutional forms from different methodological, practical, and theoretical vantages. They might examine forms and practices of public scholarship and the theories, histories and systems of thought that shape and illuminate public culture and public scholarship. Workshops should encourage comparative, interdisciplinary, and cross-institutional interchange and reflection that brings into conversation public scholarship in Africa, creative cultural production, and critical theory. Workshop budgets will vary depending on proposed plans; the maximum award is ZAR 60,000.

Applications may be submitted by experienced scholars and cultural practitioners based in universities, museums, and other cultural organizations in South Africa who are interested in creating or reinvigorating interdisciplinary, cross-institutional engagement and understanding and who are committed to training the next generations of scholar-practitioners. Applications may be submitted by a single individual or a pair of individuals who have different institutional affiliations and bring different perspectives, approaches, or specializations to the proposed Workshop theme.

For full information about this opportunity and how to apply, see the full Call for Proposals listed under “ACIP Opportunities” on our website. A list of previously supported ACIP Workshops is also available there: .

ACIP is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

REMINDER: CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Closing Date: Monday 3 May 2021

The African Critical Inquiry Programme is pleased to announce the 2021 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards to support African doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled at South African universities and conducting dissertation research on relevant topics. Grant amounts vary depending on research plans, with a maximum award of ZAR 40,000.

The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa. The Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards are open to African postgraduate students (regardless of citizenship) in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Applicants must be currently registered in a Ph.D. programme in a South African university and be working on topics related to ACIP’s focus. Awards will support doctoral research projects focused on topics such as institutions of public culture, particular aspects of museums and exhibitions, forms and practices of public scholarship, culture and communication, and the theories, histories and systems of thought that shape and illuminate public culture and public scholarship. Awards are open to proposals working with a range of methodologies in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, including research in archives and collections, fieldwork, interviews, surveys, and quantitative data collection. 

For full information about this opportunity and how to apply, see the full Call for Proposals listed under “ACIP Opportunities” on our website: .

ACIP is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

Call for Proposals for ACASA-sponsored session

CAA 2022 Annual Conference

Chicago, IL; February 16–19, 2022 (Format To Be Determined)

DEADLINE (to send proposals to ACASA for review): APRIL 15th, 2021

Send proposals electronically to Bukky Gbadegesin, (CAA Liaison, ogbadege@slu.edu) and copy (CC) Cynthia Becker (ACASA Secretary, cjbecker@bu.edu).

As an Affiliated Society, ACASA sponsors one guaranteed session at CAA’s annual meeting. We invite proposals for sessions in all areas of the study of the arts of Africa, and we welcome submissions from professionals and scholars at all stages of their careers. The Annual Conference Committee looks for session that cover the breadth of current thought and research in art, art and architectural history, theory and criticism, pedagogical issues, museum and curatorial practice, conservation, and developments in technology.
To submit a proposal to be considered as the ACASA-sponsored session, individuals do not need to be current CAA members. Eventually, please note that all participants and chairs of the selected session will need to be CAA members and register for the conference. The online registration schedule for the CAA 2022 Annual Conference will be announced shortly.

SUBMISSION FOR ACASA CONSIDERATION

ACASA will sponsor either one Complete Session proposal pre-formed with participants and papers/projects chosen in advance or one Session Soliciting Contributors proposal.
The Complete Session option allows a submission for a complete panel pre-formed with participants and papers/projects chosen in advance by session chairs. This session requires advance planning and information gathering by the chair(s). A panel has a chair, no more than four paper presenters, and can include a discussant. A complete session proposal consists of 1) the panel title and abstract; 2) names, email address, phone number, and institutional affiliation of each participant on the panel; 3) paper titles and an abstract for all the papers. The panel abstract should consist of a statement about the topic and a brief summary of the main argument(s) to be explored (no more than 250 words).

The Session Soliciting Contributors option allows a submission for a full session with yet-to-be identified speakers and papers/projects. If selected by ACASA, such sessions will be included in the call for participation (CFP) which opens on August 12, 2021.

GENERAL SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The following guidelines will help prospective participants complete their proposal:
All sessions will be 90 minutes in length. Please plan accordingly.
In order to submit a proposal to ACASA for consideration, individuals do not need to be current CAA members. However, all participants of the selected ACASA-Sponsored session will need to be current members to finalize the session submission with CAA by April 30th.
CVs are required for panel proposals where the chair and, if applicable, the co-chair are known.
Session descriptions and paper abstracts should be no more than 250 words in length.
The accuracy of information entered into the proposal form (e.g. spelling of names, affiliations, titles) is important, as it will be pulled directly from this database for conference publications such as Abstracts 2022 and on the conference website.
The quality of the panel abstracts is the main criterion for acceptance; a panel with a weak abstract or with two or more weak paper abstracts is unlikely to be accepted. The submission process must be completed online.
Online registration for the CAA 110th Annual Conference will be announced shortly.

KEY DATES
April 15, 2021 – Submit proposals for Complete or Session Soliciting Contributors to CAA Liaison, ogbadege@slu.edu and ACASA Secretary, cjbecker@bu.edu.
April 22 – Selected ACASA-sponsored session will be notified.
April 30 – Deadline for submission to CAA of chosen ACASA-sponsored session.
TBA – Online conference registration opens.

The CAA call for proposals is accessible at: http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/

https://www.acasaonline.org/4182-2/

Find here the recorded conference from February, 17 2021:
https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/newest+Clip+of+Conference+to++Celebrate+the+Contributions+of+Professor+William+Dewey/1_5l5tnx52

On September 27,2020 the ACASA Board voted to hold our Triennial conference in June 15-20, 2021 remotely. We are planning a dynamic, interactive meeting, that takes into consideration our magnitude and scope, our various time zones and internet capabilities, and our need for thoughtful engagement outside panel presentations.

The African Critical Inquiry Programme has named Nsima Udo as recipient of the 2020 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award. Udo is a Nigerian student pursuing his PhD in History at the University of the Western Cape. Support from ACIP’s Ivan Karp Award will allow Udo to do significant research for his dissertation. He plans to do research in Calabar, Nigeria for his project, The Politics of Aesthetics and Performance: Visuality and the Remaking of Culture in the Calabar Festival and Carnival, 2004 -2019.

Founded in 2012, the African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at University of the Western Cape in Cape Town and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta. Supported by donations to the Ivan Karp and Corinne Kratz Fund, the ACIP fosters thinking and working across public cultural institutions, across disciplines and fields, and across generations. It seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions, and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa through an annual ACIP Workshop and through the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards, which support African doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences enrolled at South African universities.

About Nsima Udo’s project: The Calabar Festival and Carnival recently became an annual event in Cross River State, Nigeria that blends elements of local cultural festivals with aspects of Caribbean carnival, which dates back to the second half of the 18th century and combines indigenous, European, and African performance traditions. When the Calabar Festival and Carnival began in 2004, some of these influences ‘returned’ to Africa and were remade at a time of political-economic change that demanded revenue diversification and the creation of a tourist economy in Nigeria. This study uses the convergence of festival performances, visuality, and local sensibilities to tease out different forms of aesthetics – the relationship between the festival and its cultural and artistic expressions – and to analyse their historical resonance in the ongoing Calabar Festival and Carnival over the past two decades. It engages with diverse performance traditions — dance, music, masquerades, floats, puppetry, street parades, and revelry during the carnival – and with photographs as “social griots” (Keller 2003) to articulate and historicize the changing sociocultural topography of an ongoing African festival.

In recent literature, the Calabar Festival and Carnival has mainly been seen in relation to the politics and cultural symbolisms in Nigeria at the time, ignoring the multifocal photographic practices that pervade the festival. This elaborate festival should not simply be reduced to the political. This project will interrogate the Calabar Festival and Carnival as a platform for the expression of multilayered aesthetics – in traditions and practice. Relying on film footage and photographs in government archives, online repositories, and personal albums, it will examine the festival through analysis of archival material, imagery, and through ethnographic research, focusing on questions around carnival performance, participation, forms of dissonance, photographic practices and image analysis, and the African aspects of the carnival. By exploring the politics of provenance, sociocultural dynamics, and the political economics of carnival festival, it will map a history of the Calabar Festival and Carnival between 2004 and 2019. How has festival become a framework through which strands of global popular cultures interweave with indigenous philosophies and performance to promote the local economy and politics? What do visual depictions do to the performance traditions of a remade carnival that has traveled from Africa to the Caribbean and back to Calabar? This project will help to understand the “carnivalization of festival,” where indigenous festivals across Africa are being repackaged as carnival festivals in the past two decades.

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Information about the 2021 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards for African students enrolled in South African Ph.D. programmes will be available in November 2020. The application deadline is 3 May 2021.

For further information, see http://www.gs.emory.edu/about/special/acip.html and https://www.facebook.com/ivan.karp.corinne.kratz.fund.

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The Yoruba Elders International Society, Rhode Island Chapter, made a lifetime achievement award to Jean Borgatti, a past president of ACASA, on October 19, 2019 at their 10th annual lecture and recognition event held at the Statehouse in Providence, RI. The organization established this award as part of an “Everyday Heroes” award program in support of the UN General Assembly Resolution 68/237 proclaiming the decade 2015-2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent, and promoting a greater knowledge of, and respect for the diverse heritage, culture, and contributions of people of African descent to the development of society.  Borgatti was also their keynote speaker, talking about the impact of Yoruba culture on artists of the African diaspora both past and present. She is shown here accepting a plaque from Pastor Emmanuel Taiwo, Board Member, Yoruba Elders International Society, and Evangelist In Charge, Celestial Church of Christ, Warwick, RI.

Statement Concerning Destruction of Cultural Patrimony in Bafut

20 November 2019

The Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA)—an independent professional association  which exists to facilitate communication among scholars, teachers, students, artists, museum specialists, collectors, and all others interested in the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora—condemns the violent aggression perpetrated by the Republic of Cameroon against the Palace of Bafut, a site included on UNESCO’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites since 2006.  Human Rights Watch reports that “On September 24 [2019], soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) attacked and looted the Royal Palace in Bafut, North-West region.”  (https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/10/11/world-heritage-site-attacked-cameroon#)  Fon Abumbi II of Bafut protested the aggression in a letter dated September 24, 2019 and addressed to the Governor of North West Region.  In addition to causing damage to buildings within the palace and perpetrating violence against those who had been neither charged nor tried in a court of law, these troops representing the authority of the State shamelessly stole historical objects from the palace museum.

According to the World Monuments Fund, the palace “embodies Bafut cultural identity and remains a center for religious rites and traditional ceremonies. Over 50 houses are clustered around the site’s spiritual core, Achum Shrine, and are used by the Fon (king), his wives, and the royal court.” (https://www.wmf.org/project/bafut-palace)  The palaces and museums of the North West Region of Cameroon serve as invaluable repositories of the long-standing traditions and material cultures of these vibrant kingdoms. These palaces and associated sites—where ritual practices have long been performed—foster and house the heritages, both tangible and intangible of these communities.  The violent destruction and looting of such a site may be understood as an attempt to erase the cultural identity of the Bafut population.  As a site listed on the Tentative List of World Heritage Sites, Bafut Palace is recognized as holding even greater than just local significance, constituting a primary locus of cultural heritage for the entirety of Cameroon, and indeed the world.  The Cameroonian State must treat these places as the internationally significant cultural heritage sites that they are. 

ACASA calls on the Republic of Cameroon to protect sites of cultural heritage as required by being party to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property.  According to Article 4(3) of the aforementioned convention, it is the obligation of the State “to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a story to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property….”  In light of this international obligation, the Cameroonian State must bring to justice and punish appropriately those responsible for this heinous act.  Furthermore, every effort must be taken to return looted items of cultural heritage to the palace museum of Bafut. 

CC:

Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon

Henri Etoundi Essomba, Ambassador of the Republic of Cameroon to the US

Peter Henry Barlein, US Ambassador to the Republic of Cameroon

Narcisse Mouelle Kombi, Minister of Arts and Culture for the Republic of Cameroon

UNESCO

World Monuments Fund

https://www.acasaonline.org/3461-2/

Join us for ACASA’s 18th Triennial Symposium in Chicago, June 16-21, 2020 at DePaul University and the Art Institute of Chicago. For registration and more information, click here.