CALL FOR PROPOSALS for the ACASA-sponsored session at the CAA 2023 Annual Conference
NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 15–18, 2023 (Conference format to be determined)
DEADLINE (to send proposals to ACASA board): MAY 5th, 2022
Please send proposals electronically to CAA Liaison, Bukky Gbadegesin: ogbadege@slu.edu
As an Affiliated Society, ACASA sponsors one guaranteed session at the annual meeting of the College Art Association. 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 sessions 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 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 2023 Annual Conference will be announced shortly.
ACASA will sponsor either:
1) a Complete Session proposal pre-formed with participants and papers/projects chosen in advance
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 may include a chair, no more than four paper presenters, and can include a discussant. A complete session proposal consists of a) the panel title and abstract (<250 words); b) CV of the chair (and co-chair, if relevant); c) names, email address, phone number, and institutional affiliation of each participant on the panel; d) paper titles and an abstract (<250 words) 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).
or, 2) a Session Soliciting Contributors proposal.
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 July 21, 2022.
GENERAL SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
- 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 May 10, 2022
- 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 2023 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 through the CAA website.
- Online registration for CAA 111th Annual Conference will be announced shortly.
KEY DATES
- May 5, 2022 – Submit proposals for Complete or Session Soliciting Contributors to CAA Liaison, ogbadege@slu.edu.
- May 6 – Selected ACASA-sponsored session will be notified.
- May 10 – Deadline to submit the selected ACASA-sponsored session to the CAA submissions portal.
- TBA – Online conference registration opens.
The CAA call for proposals is accessible at: http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/
Africana Sacred Healing Arts
The Yale Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) is thrilled to announce a series of annual conferences exploring different aspects of Black Sacred Arts to begin in 2022. May 16–18, 2022
Submission deadline: September 15, 2021
The ISM invites proposals for papers, presentations, and artistic performances that address topics including but not limited to
· Expanding definitions of the healing arts, illness, and unwellness
· Arts of healing and baptism/initiation
· Arts of healing and mortuary rites
· Healing as experienced transnationally and in the digital world
· Healing arts and the senses (inclusive of extra-sensory modes)
· Therapeutic arts of music, dance, and performance
· Medicine, materiality, and the arts
· Relationships between healing, religion, and the medical sciences
· The various identities of healers
NOTE: Accepted presenters and performers in attendance will receive an allowance to help defray the cost of travel to New Haven. In addition, they will be provided hotel accommodations and some meals during the conference.
Art beyond the Politics: Africa and the ‘Other’ Europe during the Cold War
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania, May 5, 6, 2022
CFP deadline: June 20, 2021
An international conference exploring transcontinental cultural relations, representations, and imaginations that occurred and developed between the countries of Africa and Eastern and Central Europe during the Cold War era.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) engaged substantively with many newly independent African states for economic, political, ideological and cultural purposes during the Cold War. They were well regarded by African countries because of their non-imperial history and therefore alternative partnership approach. CEE countries provided support to liberation struggles, as well as offered large amounts of technical assistance and loans to partners in Africa. They developed new forms of global knowledge and institutions to support a wide-ranging program of socialist ‘export’: theatre and film, economic and scientific expertise, humanitarian aid and political ideals – all were essential to the grand effort to extend ‘socialist modernity’ globally.
This also in return reshaped Central-Eastern Europe, as African students, workers and exiles imported African cultures into the region, alongside popular media, art, and political solidarity movements. The links between Central-Eastern Europe and Africa suggest the importance of examining this still unconventional perspective on the configuration of the Cold War, which is traditionally viewed as centering around superpower rivalries. In contrast to the Western vision of one homogenous ‘Soviet bloc‘, the view from the Global South reveals evolving motivations and sometimes contradictory aims of artistic mobilities from socialist countries, whether East Germany, the Soviet Union (including the Baltic States), Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, among others.
The cultural geography of the Cold War was inevitably shaped by a network of links between the Soviet and the US spheres under the new era of decolonization. A new expanding language of socialist ‘fraternity’ across continents facilitated this exchange of cultures. Africa occupied the imagination of some CEE artists and writers as a way to escape one’s poor socialist reality and enter a new, open, and intriguing world. For many CEE citizens, Africa encapsulated the world outside the Soviet bloc, differing from it in almost every respect. Many saw it both as a chance for self-realisation, and as prospects for some tangible financial gains.
This conference aims to fill the lacuna of knowledge about both the actual and imaginary
cultural links between Central-Eastern Europe and the African continent during the Cold War era. It proposes a reconsideration of whether and to what extent artistic exchanges between these non-Western contexts might escape historically developed power relations between Europe and Africa and its role in postcolonial and decolonial debates.
Since neither Africa nor Central and Eastern Europe are homogenous, and consist of countries with different historical and cultural backgrounds and contemporary realities, we especially invite the discussion of possible theoretical frameworks and research methodologies that overcome the objectification of Africa and/or Central Eastern Europe.
We seek to gather scholars, curators and artists working in the fields of art history, cultural studies, art, architecture, design, fashion, cinema and theatre, musicology, literary studies and other disciplines to explore the formation of cultural relations between the regions or particular states.
Potential topics include but are not limited to:
1. The discourse of colonisation/ decolonisation/postcolonisation in art, art history and cultural history: African and CEE perspectives.
2. Transcontinental cultural relations, migration of artists, artworks, artefacts and ideas.
3. The images, dreams, and delusions of CEE in African countries.
4. The representation and reception of Africa in CEE countries.
5. Soviet Union/US struggle for influence in Africa: reflections, connections, parallels and contrasts in art, design and architecture.
6. Members of the Black diaspora as ambassadors of modernisation in CEE.
7. The process of ‘othering’ and cultural appropriations of African/CEE cultures.
8. Issues of whiteness and race in CEE.
9. Curating African art collections in CEE museums.
10. Artworks of CEE artists, designers and architects in Africa: heritage, research, curatorship
Conference academic committee:
Dr. Karina Simonson, Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Vilnius University (Chair)
Inga Lace, C-MAP Central and Eastern Europe Fellow at MoMA
Dr. George Tebogo Mahashe, University of Cape Town
Dr. Laura Petrauskaite, Art Research Institute, Vilnius Academy of Arts
Dr. Bart Pushaw, University of Copenhagen
Dr. Aušra Trakšelyte, Art Research Institute, Vilnius Academy of Arts
Dr. Tomas Vaiseta, Faculty of History, Vilnius University
Accepted papers will be considered for publication in peer-reviewed academic journal Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis (2023 issue).
Please, send to Dr. Karina Simonson (karina.simonson@vda.lt) a 300-word abstract of your proposed paper and a short bio by June 20, 2021.
The selected participants will be notified by June 30th, 2021.
Conference fee: 50 EUR.