Call For Papers: Human Rights, Literature, the Arts, and Social Sciences, 21-23 November 2013, Abstract Deadline: 31 March 2013

cross-posted from H-AFRLITCINE

Call For Papers: Human Rights, Literature, the Arts, and Social Sciences International Conference, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant
November 21-23, 2013

The persistence of repressive and discriminatory national policies, cultural practices, wars, genocide, religious conflict, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, rape, child-soldiering, sex-trafficking, and other forms of violence threaten the maintenance of human rights.  These conditions remind us of the ever pressing need to safeguard our humanity through the preservation of human rights.

For this year, the conference will focus on the following topics: a) Women’s rights/violations of women’s rights; b) children’s rights/violations of children’s rights; c) and Indigenous Rights & Sovereignty.

The envisioned international conference will focus on the role of literature (the Humanities), the arts, Social Sciences and the Law in the discussion, representation, and promotion of human rights, paying special attention to the areas delineated. We wish to bring writers, artists, theorists, scholars, lawyers, and NGOs into a series of conversations that engage the issue of human rights, including the ethical, political, social, economic, and cultural implications of either violations or the constructions of human rights.

We invite presentations that address human rights as they relate to the areas identified above or specific topics by themselves or through comparative lenses. Topics/themes include, but are not limited to:

*   The novel, poetry, drama/theatre/performance
*   Ethics and international law
*   Films/cinema and human rights
*   Women’s rights in film/literature
*   The role of NGOs in the human rights debate
*   The role of NGOs in Women’s rights
*   Holocaust/Genocide/War crimes/Crimes against humanity
*   Sex trafficking, slavery, child soldiering
*   Rape as a weapon of war
*   Migration and refugee rights
*   Environmental rights
*   Human rights in the age of globalization
*   TRC or Truth Commissions (Here we want to move beyond South Africa)
*   Women’s rights in cultural, regional, national contexts;
*   Human rights compliance

Presentation formats: Papers, panels, poster sessions, debates, discussions, seminars, lectures, forums, and/or performances, and workshops.  Send abstracts to:

Professor Maureen N. Eke, Department of English
Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, 48859
Email: eke1mn@cmich.edu; Maureen.eke@cmich.edu         OR

Professor Sterling Johnson, Department of Political Science
Email: johns1s@cmich.edu                                                                 OR

Professor Benjamin Ramirez-Shwegnaabi Department of History
Email: ramir1b@cmich.edu

Abstract Deadline: March 31, 2013

“Yoruba Movies: Creating Indelible Authentic Identity”: First International Conference of Yoruba Films, Adeleke University Ede, Abstract Deadline 1 February 2013

PRESS RELEASE

FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF YORUBA FILMS
The development of the film enterprise in Nigeria cannot be complete
without stating the fact that the Yoruba were among the front runners in
its development. With the shifting of emphasis from the Colonial Film Unit
to Nigerian Film Corporation, the fact remains that some Yoruba, the likes
of Alade Aromire and Adebayo Salami broke the monopoly of film making from
the celluloid stock to video technology with the introduction of the
Structural Adjustment Programme. Many film artists rose after this
experience, just as more opportunities were opened for young talents. This
however, is after Chief Hubert Ogunde, Ola Balogun, Moses Ola-iya, Ademola
Afolayan, Ojeleke Ajangila (the masquerade drama guru) and a host of other
leading Yoruba artists have opened up great opportunities through their
ventures in celluloid films and their theatricality. With the setting up
of the Nigerian Film Corporation, post production that was always done in
London was shifted to Nigeria.  It will not be outrageous to say that the
Yoruba opened up the technological investment opportunities the genre can
offer in Nigeria, though they may not be seen as defining the genre
outside the shores of Nigeria.

Attempts therefore need to be made to explore some unique features of
Yoruba films and compare it with what obtains within and outside Africa.
Thus, it is important to give real and specific academic attentions to it
because of the latest modern developments of identity accolades. This is
necessary, because while some other Nigerian groups have readily keyed
into the wood identity, and some have suggested Oduwood from the Oduduwa
progenitor, the Yoruba film makers would rather prefer to be classified
under the Association of Nigeria Theatre Artists Practitioners, (ANTP) and
their productions simply identified as YORUBA FILMS or Naija Films
(Ogunleye 2012). Thus, because no world acclaimed identity has been
created for it, Yoruba films have had to grudgingly feature under the
Nollywood identity, and thereby had to play the second fiddle.
This is why the Mass Communication Department of Adeleke University Ede,
Nigeria is inaugurating a yearly International conference on Yoruba Films,
with the intent of not only opening up research into the genre, but
restoring the lost glories and identity created by the pioneering Yoruba
Film makers, but also an avenue to showcase Yoruba films, promote upcoming
artists, and open a library for Yoruba films in the University.
This conference is therefore organised for academics of Yoruba and
non-Yoruba extractions, within and outside Nigeria to present scholarly
papers and, Yoruba movie artists and producers to showcase their films.

Theme: Yoruba Movies: Creating Indelible Authentic Identity

Sub-theme: Abstracts are invited from any of the sub-themes below:
1.    Theatre Practice from the Alarinjo, Ajangila set up to the Screen.
2.    Contributions of Yoruba doyens of modern and traditional Theatre to
film developments in Nigeria.
3.    Contributions of Yoruba Movies to film development in Nigeria.
4.    Yoruba Films and global identity.
5.    Yoruba films, technology, quality, distribution and marketing.
6.     Unique features of Yoruba Films- scripting, dialogue and production
acting styles.
7.     The ANTP and movie ethics and morality in Nigeria
8.    And any other relevant ideas.

Abstracts not exceeding 300 words which should contain personal and
organisational details of the scholar should be sent to:
yorubafilms@rocketmail.com

and copy:
ayansolamd@ymail.com

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1st February, 2013.
Submission of full papers: February 15th, 2013.

Guest Speaker:  Prof Ayo Akinwale- Department of Theatre and Performing
Arts, University of Ilorin, Kwara State Nigeria.
Royal Guests: Yoruba Obas that have been involved in Theatre practise.
Date: March 12th to 14th 2013.
Venue: Multipurpose Hall, Adeleke University, Ede Osun State Nigeria.

For more details, Yoruba movie producers and other interested scholars who
wish to display their films at the conference venue can contact:
Dr. Kayode Animasaun: Head, Mass Communication Department.
Tel: +2348073787551
Margaret Ayansola: Secretary, Conference Planning Committee.
Tel: +2348136903086

7th Conference on Literature in Northern Nigeria, Bayero University, Kano, 3-6 December 2012. Abstract Deadline: 19 October 2012

Bayero   University, Kano (Kano State, Nigeria)

In conjunction with

Kwara State University, Malete

(Kwara State, Nigeria)

 

Announces

7^thConference

ON

LITERATURE IN NORTHERN NIGERIA

DATE: December 3-6, 2012

VENUE: Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria

THEME:

 LITERATURE, HISTORY AND IDENTITY IN NORTHERN NIGERIA

SUB-THEMES

• Literature and historical identity in Northern Nigeria
• Literature and history in Northern Nigeria
• Literature and historical figures in Northern Nigeria
• Literature and the female identity in Northern Nigeria
• Literature and indigenous languages in Northern Nigeria
• Literature and pre-colonial history in Northern Nigeria
• Literature and colonial resistance in Northern Nigeria
• Style and identity in Northern Nigerian Literature
• Theatre and identity in Northern Nigeria literature
• Film and identity in Northern Nigeria literature
• Poetry and identity in Northern Nigerian literature
• Prose and identity in Northern Nigerian literature
• Religion and identity in Northern Nigerian literature
• Popular culture and identity in Northern Nigerian literature
• Globalization and identity in Northern Nigerian literature

Date line for submission of abstracts: Friday October 19, 2012

Full papers to be submitted on or before November 20, 2012

Hotel Reservation: November 5, 2012 (BUK Guest House 08034564432, Mambayya House 08031817915, Royal Tropicana 064639352, Grand Central Hotel 08024203311, Prince Hotel 064200601-3, Ni’ima Guest Palace 08064823060)

Registration/Conference fees: N10,000/ International Participants: $100

Send Abstracts to: mbhadmus@yahoo.com

                                mandzukogisawaba@yahoo.com

                               

   CONVENER:                                                                                     

Prof Mohammed Omowunmi Bhadmus                                        

Dept of English and French                                                              

 08037038455,                                                                                                                        

  08062211192

 LOC SECRETARY

Maikudi Abubakar Zukogi

 08035190772, 08037014761  

Call for papers: Everyday Media Culture in Africa. Conference at University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Abstract Deadline: 30 October 2011

Call for Papers: Beyond Normative Approaches: Everyday Media Culture in Africa

An international conference organized by the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan and with support from the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster

Dates: 27-29 February 2012
Venue: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Deadline for abstracts: 30 October 2011

We invite contributions that address the everyday lived experiences of Africans in their interaction with different kinds of media: old and new, state and private, elite and popular, global and national. All over the continent today, country by country, there are signs of growth and change-a buzz of energy stimulated, in part, by the rapid spread and impact of new mobile communication technologies and the new economic, political and social affordances which they help to create. The rise of these technologies, and the new forms of media practice and use associated with them, is in parallel with the emergence of new forms of commercial mediation and communications enterprises across the global South, which arguably complicate the role of the media in African cultures and societies.

Since media studies began in the 1970s, its object of study has changed in fundamental ways. Media were at first conceptualized almost wholly within the frame of the nation-state, its national politics and culture. The bulk of academic research on media and communication in Africa has studied media through the lens of media-state relations, hereby adopting liberal democracy as normative ideal and focusing on the potential contribution of African media to development and democratization. This approach has insufficiently looked at the actual role of media in African societies but instead focused on what roles media ought to play on the continent. Instead of understanding media on the continent on its own terms, scholars have often produced ahistorical accounts that posture as negative imprints of Western models of media-state relations. Furthermore, the heavy focus on media-state relations in studies on media in Africa has ignored both the way in which ordinary people relate to media and the increasingly important role of private capital and the market in the realm of African media.

Since the 1990s, the diffusion of continuing technological innovations in digital media and telecommunications, driven by the world economy, has changed the media landscape beyond recognition, producing the globalized world that all of us inhabit today. The question which then arises is what the study of media can tell us about Africa, in all its diversity, and the position of African societies in the world today. Among other issues, we invite participants to engage with one or more of the following questions:

Audiences, lived experience and changing notions of identity

– How can we research and theorize media cultures in today’s  Africa?

– What roles do different forms of media play in the everyday lives of Africans?

– How do global and national media contribute to changing notions of African identities?

Media, participation and resistance

– What role do old and new media play in forms of resistance on the continent?

– To what extent are media contributing to emerging participatory cultures in Africa?

– What does the diffusion and uptake of new media technologies tell us about social change taking place in Africa today?

Consumer culture and the media

– How can we understand the contribution of media to the rise of consumer cultures and consumption practices in Africa?

– What role do media and communications play in the increasing commodification of development?

– Who are the new entrepreneurial elites who are driving the diffusion of technological innovation in Africa?

For Africa-based scholars who would like to participate but require travel funding (primarily for airfare) to do so, please include a funding request with an estimated travel budget. A small amount of funding will be available to support presenters’ participation.

There will be a modest registration fee (R 175 for graduate students, R350 for faculty) to cover the costs of snacks and some meals.

Proposals for 20-minute papers should include the following: paper title, author, institutional affiliation and postal address, email address, abstract of no more than 300 words. Proposals should be sent on or before 30 October 2011 to Wendy Willems at: wendy.willems@wits.ac.za

Call for papers for an International Conference on the Theorization and Classification of African Regional Movies. Abstract Deadline: 20 September 2011

From the Society of Movie Scholars:

African movies across its regions have grown to the extent that there is need to critically do their in-depth studies with the purpose of generating theories on their packaging, analysis and proper classification into genres. Most movies produced in Africa are packaged without recourse to definite theories. Broadly speaking, most of the movies can be categorized into three groups namely, cultural or epic; modern and religious movies. While the religious and cultural movies could be in local or foreign languages, modern movies are so described because they are often located in the context of urban or rural populace and are produced in foreign or local languages, treating themes bothering on modern issues. But where they are in local languages, they are often lazed with Pidgin English or code mixed. However, these groupings possess the tendency to overlap if these categories are to be retained. Thus, it is difficult to arrogate to these groupings as genres on their own, more so that these grading are not guided by definite theories.

To define these groups effectively therefore, it might be necessary to do a close survey of their constituents. This is when the components can be highlighted into specific genres for stimulating and rich academic exercise. It is expected as the outcome of the exercise that specialization, originality and scope-widening and thus further ground for employment creation and legitimacy of production and its development would be engendered. Then practitioners’ specializations on specific genres would increase, and the tendency to recycle old ideas for new creations would be reduced.
This conference is therefore organized with the intent of gathering interested scholars and practitioners within and outside Africa to rub minds so as to evolve specific theories of packaging, analysis, and map out what genres African movies could be grouped. Taking a leap from the fact that movies are audio-visualisation of literature and literary texts and are analysed based on definite theories, the objective therefore is to cut a niche for African movies like literature, and place them strategically in the world movie categorizations but based on African development ideals and thus globalise what hitherto were local mediations.

In view of the above, abstracts are invited from academics, media industry professionals, movie producers, distributors, government agencies, policymakers, movie regulators, agencies, donors, civil society organisations, independent consultants, research groups and students, on any aspects of the under listed sub-themes. Such abstracts which should not exceed 200 words should be based on the analysis of select movies that fall within the sub-themes. This would eventually argue out the basis for specified theories and why the movie should be classified within the genres that the scholar is advocating. Contributors should however not forget to state under which sub-theme they are submitting their abstract.
Abstracts are to be sent to our email address: moviescholars@gmail.com on or before September 20th 2011, while full paper must reach us before September 30th, 2011.

Sub-themes
Below are the likely, but by no means the only sub-themes on which abstracts can be submitted.
Trends in movie Theories.
Existing Literary Theories and the need or not, for distinct African movie theories.
Generating theories on African movies.
Emergent genres in African movies.
Movies and the relevance of African-specific genres.
Classifying African urban and rural movies.
Gender and social issues in African movies, need for classical genrization.
War and crime movies and proper classification.
Travel movies and issues of depiction.
African movies and the global media culture.
Representation of economic and political issues in African movies
Africans’ contributions to the Theories of Gaze.
Sociology and Psychology of African movies.
Conference Dates: October 27-29, 2011
Venue: Osun State University, Osogbo; Nigeria.
Proposals should include abstract title, author’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and institutional affiliation.
Conference fee: A non-refundable registration fee of N15, 000 or (USD 250, BP150 for participants from the US, Europe, and other African countries). This must be paid immediately when an abstract is accepted. It is expected that all participants will raise the funding to attend the conference please.
Enquiries:
For more details, please contact any of the following:
*Kayode Animasaun, PhD: College of Humanities and Culture Osun State University, Ikire Campus, Ikire. Convener and Chairman LOC:
+2348073787551, drkayanimasaun@gmail.Com
*Gloria Ernest-Samuel, Imo State University Owerri- Sec. LOC
+2348035085625, gloimsu@yahoo.com
*Ameh Akoh PhD H.O.D Languages and Linguistics Department, Osun State University, Ikire Campus, Ikire
: +2348035992490, amehakoh@yahoo.co.uk

For more details, please visit the website:
http://www.moviescholars.org

 

Call for Papers: Nollywood in Africa, Africa in Nollywood, International Conference at Pan-African University, Lagos. Abstract Deadline: 30 June 2011

Nollywood in Africa, Africa in Nollywood
An International Conference

School of Media and Communication (SMC)
Pan African University, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria

Dates: July 21-24, 2011

Conveners:

Professor Emevwo Biakolo-Dean School of Media and Communication, PAU, VI, Nigeria & Professor Onookome Okome-University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

There has been a boom in the scholarship of Nollywood lately, so that it is now appropriate to speak of an intellectual niche that we may, for want of a better phrase, refer to as “Nollywood Studies.” As part of its template, this area of African Studies is concerned with the cultural product, the Nollywood film. There are also aspects dealing with production style, distribution, exhibition and financing, which the Nollywood industry inaugurated so quickly and spontaneously. Indeed, a body of mythologies has congealed around the way Nollywood makes its film. One documentary film after the other rehashes these mythologies ad infinitum. One remarkable feature of Nollywood as African’s “dream factory” is that it came into life and has lived its life without the express support of any Government or other institutional means. However, understanding the popularity that Nollywood enjoys across the African continent and its diasporas is a complex matter. Nollywood was able to achieve and sustain this popularity because it has managed to find new ways of migrating in and outside Africa without let or hindrance. Yet, its growth and unprecedented popularity as Africa’s “popular cinema” did not happen without peculiar challenges for the producers. In the early days, Nollywood was vilified in the as the art of idiots and some even vented to called it the “peddler’s art” in the same way that Hollywood was vilified in the 1890s. Even today, not everyone is happy about what it reads as local cultures. Many still regard it as “fake art.” Some still describe it as “infantile” in the ways it reads, makes and circulates culture. Inattentive to what the cultural brouhaha is all about, Nollywood producers have gone on to do what they know how to do best: produce more Nollywood films for their captive audiences across African and in the black diasporas.

This conference has two goals. First, it seeks to rephrase the significance of Nollywood as a popular vehicle for the production of culture and the provision of a systematic way of reading the Nollywood film (and industry) as popular art.

To answer these questions, the convener solicits abstracts that deal with: (1) the production and circulation of culture in Nollywood; (2) Nollywood in Africa and the African diasporas, (3) Nollywood’s Africa and the representations of Africa in Nollywood;(4) the audience of Nollywood; (5) women in/of Nollywood; (6) transgressive and un-cultural Nollywood; (7)sexualities and sexual preference in Nollywood film; (7) exhibition, financing and distribution in Nollywood; (8) the internet and Nollywood; (9) Nollywood and the development of national cinemas in Africa;(10) and Nollywood in the world.

Invited speakers include Professor Karin Barber (University of Birmingham, UK), Professor John Haynes (Brooklyn College, Long Island University, New York), Professor John McCall (University of Southern Illinois, US) and Prof. Dr. Till Forster (University of Basel, Switzerland).

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS listed:

Karin Barber

Jon Haynes

Manthia Diawara

Biodun Jeyifo

Abstracts and inquiries should be sent by email to Añuli Agina <aagina@smc.edu.ng>, Vivian Ojiyovwi-Adeoti <vadeoti@smc.edu.ng>, and Ijeoma Nwezeh <inwezeh@smc.edu.ng> no latter than June 30, 2011 and clearly marked, “Nollywood in Africa Conference” on the subject line of the email.

Call for Papers: Creativity and Cultural Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora–University of Ibadan–Proposal Deadline: March 30, 2011

Call for Papers: Creativity and Cultural Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora — Proposals Due March 30, 2011

The Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora — Dates: July 4-6, 2011

Venue: Conference Centre, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
Convener: Ibadan Cultural Studies Group

We are inviting scholars to submit conference papers and full panel proposals for The Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa on “Creativity And Cultural Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora”. Accounts of creativity and the imagination have emerged in numerous areas such as literature and the arts, psychology, mathematics and the sciences, business, popular psychology, the social sciences, engineering and technology. The discourse of creativity that surfaces within multiple fields reveals that the notion of the individual creator is not simply widespread, but omnipresent; indeed, it is a fundamental ideology of Western culture.

Challenging the individualist and depoliticized ideology of creativity, the conference calls for papers that present alternative accounts of the social and political dimensions of creativity as they relate to invention, technology, work, artistic and cultural production, the body, desire, pedagogy and social change. The conference aims to reach a multidisciplinary academic audience; artists and grassroots activists; the political, journalistic, and information technology communities; and interested members of the general reading public. The conference promises to create a provocative space for comparative critical dialogue between scholars and dancers, actors and writers, songwriters and singers. The conference invites papers on all aspects of creativity, from the artistic to the scientific and the humanistic.

Scholars in all disciplines are invited to propose papers on various aspects, including but not limited to any of the following:

√Creativity Profile: what is novel and original among Africans and Black people generally?

* Value Added to Progress: development ideas, new thinking

* Globalized Modernity and its consequences on music, dance, performance, home-video culture, African Traditional Religion, indigenous African clothes and textile designs, indigenous African philosophies, wise sayings and general thought process.

* Music

* Dance

* Performance

* The creative process in Africa and the African Diaspora (e.g., how do the diviners work; how do masquerades perform?)

* Creative thought processes (what do texts in divination represent? how do we interpret works of literature? etc)

* Creativity and the Everyday

* Gender, Imagination, and Creative Space

* Ethical issues such as in technological innovations, stunning improvements in our knowledge of and mastery over the natural world and living organisms, concentration of power, wealth and resources in the first world; the concomitant impoverishment of the rest; global environmental destruction; and applications of new knowledge and technology that may be harmful or dangerous.

* Histories of creativity and inventions.

* The politics of creativity (e.g., creativity and resistance, anti-colonial genres, creativity and apartheid, creativity and democratic movements)

* Nollywood (production, text, marketing, impact, etc.)

* Technology, Information, Innovation (e.g., the ambivalent effects and challenges of proliferating technologies and information).

* “Beyond Art?” as expressed in the current range of artistic and cultural practices, especially in the wake of the drastic shifts in critical paradigms associated with women’s studies, multiculturalism, cultural studies, women’s art, popular culture, queer studies and Culture Wars of the 1980s and 1990s.

* The Expanding Body: e.g., the widespread experimentation and new theorizations with regard to the body and its relation to subjectivity.

* The pedagogy of creativity: strategies, agents and locations that have sought to transcend the hierarchies and limits of traditional pedagogy.

* Social Movements: developments in new social movements and their creative strategies for political organizing, protest, and autonomy; how activists and communities have been imagining and enacting their political aspirations and organizing.

Participants will be drawn from different parts of the world. Graduate students are encouraged to attend and present papers. The conference will provide time for scholars from various disciplines and geographical locations to interact, exchange ideas, and receive feedback.

Submitted papers will be assigned to particular panels according to similarities in theme, topic, discipline, or geographical location. Additionally, selected papers will be published in book form.

The deadline for submitting paper proposals is March 30, 2011. Proposals should include a 250-word abstract and title, as well as the author’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and institutional affiliation.

Please submit all abstracts to:

Professor Ademola Dasylva <dasylvang@yahoo.com> or <a.dasylva@ibadanculturalstudiesgroup.org>

A mandatory non-refundable registration fee of N5,000 or (USD 100/BP50 for participants from the US, Europe, and other African countries) must be paid immediately when an abstract is accepted. (Students: N3,000 or USD65/BP40).

It is expected that all participants will raise the funding to attend the conference.

For more information, please visit the conference website:
http://www.ibadanculturalstudiesgroup.org/toyinfalolaconference/

Call for Papers: Reading and Producing Nollywood: An International Symposium. Abstract Submission Deadline 21 February 2011

SUMMARY:
Conveners: Professor Duro Oni (University of Lagos),
Professor Onookome Okome (University of Alberta/Pan African University),
Bic Leu (US Fulbright Fellow/University of Lagos)

Venue: University of Lagos, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria

Dates: Wednesday, March 23–Friday, March 25, 2011

Deadline for submission: Monday, February 21, 2011 tobic.leu@fulbrightmail.org and durooni@yahoo.co.uk

 
ABOUT:

Everyone in Nigeria has an opinion on and about Nollywood. This is also true of Africans and those in the African Diaspora. Opinion expressed by each respondent depends on a number of factors, some of which may have little or nothing to do with the content of Nollywood films or the industry itself. This is partly because Nollywood can no longer be ignored and partly because even for those who wish the industry a bad turn, all such predictions have failed.

For those who referred to this cinematic practice as a “peddler’s trade,” the reality now is that this “trade” has taken on the narrative of the Nigerian nation as a cultural and political entity. The narrative machine that it has generated has permeated all aspects of the Nigeria world, making the skeptics of its narrative focus and style furious at it for creating what some of them call “false culture”. Comments about what Nollywood presents to the public are therefore not always salutary. If anything, they are often acerbic. In fact, these comments cast doubt on both the narrative practices, the content of the narratives as social documents and the very industry itself.

Among the intellectual class in Nigeria, Nollywood films are more or less street art, one which should have no social import. One argument is that the makers of Nollywood are often seduced by quick financial turn over, and for this reason the content of Nollywood films is often secondary to ideologies and other cultural matters. Seduced by the allure of exaggerated earning reported for the industry, government cultural agencies have embraced Nollywood with care and some caution as they fight to have some of the benefits accruing to the industry. For operators of these agencies, the bottom line is expressed in the entrepreneurial sprits of workers in the industry, something that is lacking in the larger Nigerian society. Elsewhere in Africa, and in the African Diaspora, Nollywood has not been very well received either. Francophone filmmakers derided the style of this cinematic tradition until recently, and only began to rethink this visual practice when it became part and parcel of M-Net screening schedule, a feat which the Francophone film industry has yet to achieve. Even then the suspicions about the industry are still rife.

At the heart of the matter is, to repeat this point, that Nollywood is amateurish, crude in part and stylistically reminiscent of the pre-silent film era. Yet, not even the most avid critic denies the popularity of these films. Indeed, it is this popularity that has given critics and other cultural enthusiasts the steam and energy to think of this media as a viable medium of narrating contemporary Nigeria while at the same time denying it of the very social presence it commands among it teeming clientele.

This symposium is designed to investigate two crucial issues of negation-the perception and reading of Nollywood as a cultural practice. It will ask questions such as: How do we read Nollywood as culture and as an industry that produces culture? Even if it is intellectually justifiable to read Nollywood side by side other cinematic practices such as Hollywood and Bollywood, can such pairing bring out what Nollywood really represents to those for whom the films are made? Is it possible to read Nollywood outside the framework of popular culture? As popular culture, what critical category do we need to read it as an urban African art?

The conveners solicit proposals and abstracts from a broad spectrum dealing with the debate around “reading Nollywood”. Although not exclusive to the interests of the conveners, proposals and abstracts dealing with these themes are especially welcomed: the sociality of the art of Nollywood, Nollywood films and contemporary Nigerian culture; Nollywood and the art of the popular in Africa; Nollywood and the African cinema; the art of story-telling in Nollywood; genre and the Nollywood film; Nollywood in the city and the city in Nollywood; Nollywood and the economy of the occult; Nollywood abroad; politics and governance in Nollywood films; women behind the camera and in Nollywood films; and towards an epistemic framework for “reading” narrativity and locality in Nollywood films.

GUIDELINES:

Proposals and abstracts should be sent no later than February 21, 2011 to:bic.leu@fulbrightmail.org and durooni@yahoo.co.uk.

• Send a title and an abstract (500 words or less), typed single-space in Times New Roman, 11 point font.
• State the name(s) of the author(s), institutional affiliation(s), postal and e-mail addresses, and phone number(s).
• Abstracts are to be sent by MS Word attachment only.

Call for papers for international workshop held in Illorin July 7-10: “Nollywood: a National Cinema” Deadline 15 June 2010

Call For Papers

 “Nollywood: A National Cinema?” An International Workshop

Workshop dates: July 7-10, 2010

Venue: Kwara Hotel/Kwara State University, Malete, Ilorin, Nigeria

            Inevitably, questions asked about the social and cultural veracity of the art of Nollywood coalesce into one grand probe, which seeks to interrogate Nollywood as a trustworthy machine for the production of culture in contemporary Nigeria. Indeed, some critics have argued that the popularity that Nollywood has engendered in the last ten years in Europe and America may well be explained in term of its re-invention of the image of the noble savage. Others disagree with this reading of the global reception of Nollywood. Constructed as questions around “cultural authenticity” in which echoes of the Kwame Nkrumah vision of pan-Africanism is all too visible, and as a site that instigates the “rough side of us,” critics have taken Nollywood apart, claiming that what it produces as culture is, to put it mildly, “false culture.” The anxieties which this argument generates can be put in this way: if Nollywood is so ubiquitous in the global marketplace of cultural commodities, there is the need to discipline it so that it does not mis-represent “us” as “nation.” Its sloppy narrative regimes must be disciplined; and its uncritical and superficial re-production of culture must be questioned, if not disciplined. Often read as the producer of “false culture,” anxieties concerning the ways that Nollywood narrates “our nation” form the bedrock of the discourses that negate Nollywood as a culture machine. While this mode of interrogation is not new-Emmanuel Obiechina makes a similar observation in his brilliant and groundbreaking study of the Onitsha Market pamphlet (Onitsha Market, Cambridge University Press, 1971)-Nollywood gives contemporary cultural mediators who make these claims even better reasons to doubt. However, we note that nowhere in these arguments that Nollywood has spurned in the last ten years is there a careful and sustained analysis of the industry as a method of articulating popular sentiments for popular consumption. Nollywood is narratively eclectic. It is linguistically diverse and accessible. Its mode of inquiry is quotidian and it critical frame of reference is unsophisticated.  In this cultural practice, there is no pretence to any intellectual engagement with the profilmic world. The texts of Nollywood films are easily recognized because they come from and are built around rumors from the streets of Nigerian cities where they fester, grow, and are transformed yet again into Nollywood films. Thrown back into the streets, these video stories are reconstituted and reinterpreted in the streets yet again and then re-made into Nollywood films so that what is initially a rumor of the inevitable death of the rich man whose source of wealth is to say the least dubious is continuously reconstituted as stories and discourses of Nollywood films and of the streets. Evidence is beginning to emerge to the effect that many countries in Africa and in the African diaspora are beginning to look to Nollywood to grow their local film industries. The sum total of the anxieties expressed by these cultural mediators comes from the unique qualities of Nollywood as popular art.

               This workshop interrogates the intersection between the nation as a narrative entity and the uses of Nollywood as agent of this act of narrativity. Among other concerns, this workshop asks the central question: is Nollywood a national cinema?” If so, what nation does it narrate? How does it make or re-mark itself as a narrative machine? Are the un-manned but eloquently articulated sites of women in this filmmaking tradition “nationalistic” in any way? How do these films read the nation as an entity? Papers are invited from presenters and contributors on these and other topics that are related to the main theme of this workshop, and must reach the organizers on or before June 15, 2010. Contributors are required to send e-copies of their abstracts to the guest-convener at onookome.okome@kwasu.edu.ng or ookome@ualberta.ca. Selected and refereed papers will be published in two books to be co-edited by Abiola Irele, Awam Amkpa, Onookome Okome and Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah. Confirm guest speakers include Prof. John McCall, University of Illinois; Professor Jon Haynes, Long Island University, New York; Mr. Afolabi Adesanyan (NFC), Mr. Emeka Mba (NFVCB); Barclays Oyakoroma(NICO);Prof. Manthia Diawara, NYU, New York, and Professor Jane Bryce, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.

               Interested participants must also pre-register for the workshop no later than June 15, 2010. Registration fees may be wired/transferred to KwaSU workshops/conferences accounts- FinBank, Ilorin, Nigeria-KwaSU Conferences/workshops current account: 120430000323901; domiciliary account number—120440000006502. International participants: US$120, local participants, N10,000.