2024 Conference Call for Proposals: “Archives in the Atlantic”

Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program at the College of Charleston
May 16 -18, 2024

Scope of Conference

Archives and related memory keeping institutions such as museums, libraries, and archaeological repositories have a collective mandate to document and preserve cultural heritage objects such as oral histories, textual records, artifacts, images, and textiles. In recent years, cultural heritage institutions responsible for collecting and preserving evidence of a shared past are confronting, re-examining, and in many cases making efforts to repair harmful, exploitative, or exclusive policies, practices, and norms. These include disrupting the widespread tendency for privileging, preserving, and reproducing a history that is predominantly white and further silencing the voices and histories of marginalized peoples and communities. 

The “Archives in the Atlantic” Conference will explore the ways archives and related cultural heritage institutions throughout the Atlantic World are confronting shared legacies of imperialism, slavery, and Indigenous dispossession through decolonizing traditional standards, developing liberatory practices, and expanding networks of belonging and representation. 

How can archival and curatorial institutions and the people who use them employ ethics of care when working with or studying communities affected by historical injustice, plunder of material culture, or erasure from the historic record? How can archivists, curators, and memory workers create more inclusive and representative holdings and build trust with members of historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities and groups? How has the landscape of repatriation transformed and how have these processes evolved in the tension between institutions, those who work within them, and stakeholder communities? Within the confines of those institutions, how do we confront and correct the curatorial decisions of past stewards of collections who perpetuated historical violences via their practice?

Other Potential Topics Include:

  • Reparative and Inclusive Description and/or Metadata Remediation
  • Ethical Collecting
  • Repatriating Collections 
  • Working with Indigenous Communities
  • Historic Preservation-National Trust-Saving Places
  • Working with Descendant Communities 
  • Black Memory Workers
  • Community Archiving 
  • Digital Archives and Digital Exhibits
  • HBCUs and Tribal Archives and Libraries 
  • Interpretation 
  • Developing Authentic Partnerships 
  • Cultural Humility in Archives and Museum Settings 

To submit a proposal and learn more, visit https://claw.cofc.edu/conferences/2024-conference-archives-in-the-atlantic/.

 

CFP: “THE VESEY CONSPIRACY at 200: BLACK ANTISLAVERY and the ATLANTIC WORLD”

**DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FEB. 28, 2018**

CFP: “THE VESEY CONSPIRACY at 200: BLACK ANTISLAVERY and the ATLANTIC WORLD”

In preparation for a volume of essays to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the “Denmark Vesey Conspiracy” of 1822, the Carolina Lowcountry in the Atlantic World Program (CLAW) at the College of Charleston will hold a small conference on enslaved and free black anti-slavery, February 8-10, 2019.

Keynote speakers will include Bernie Powers (author of Black Charlestonians) and Michael Moore (executive director of the International African American Museum). Other featured participants include Manisha Sinha, Douglas Egerton, Samuel Ntewusu, and Rebecca Shumway.

Known to scholars mainly as a conspiracy of Carolina slaves, the “Denmark Vesey Conspiracy” also ensnared free black people and should be treated as a part of the broader black anti-slavery movement. Some of the rebels were aware of the Missouri Compromise debates over slavery. They compared Carolina whites to those national leaders who they thought wanted to end slavery. Some of the rebels were aware of the Sierra Leone colony of freed slaves and probably had known free and enslaved people who emigrated there in 1821. Some were aware of revolutionary Haiti. Some were born in Africa. In the truest sense, there were African, American, and Atlantic dimensions to the 1822 rebels’ organizing.

We welcome proposals seeking to understand black anti-slavery in the wider Atlantic world, including but not limited to Africa, the Caribbean, and Carolina. Proposals may include but are not limited to:

Rebellions in Africa
Archives of rebellion
Women in rebellions
Information networks
Religion and spirituality
Empire and colonization
The archive of antislavery
African resistance strategies
Cultural memory of rebellion
Gender/sexuality and rebellion
Rebellions & the Middle Passage
Criminalization of antislavery activity
Legacies of the repression of rebellions
Rebellions against the internal slave trade
Resistance and the internal (U.S.) slave trade
Haiti and black anti-slavery in the Atlantic World
Black activists and the politics of resistance to slavery
Black antislavery and subsequent social movements (such as #BLM)…

Charleston is an apt setting for these discussions. Nearby to Stono Creek, the namesake of one of the most significant slave rebellions in American history, Charleston was also a major entrepot for enslaved people trafficked from elsewhere in the Atlantic world. The College of Charleston was founded shortly before Vesey’s birth, and sits in the midst of the neighborhoods in which the uprising planners lived and worked. Tours will be organized as part of the conference.

To propose a paper, send a CV and a 250 word abstract to James O’Neil Spady (jspady@soka.edu) by February 28, 2018. Authors of accepted proposals will be asked to submit their completed essays by January 8, 2019. The complete essays will be distributed to conference attendees in advance, workshopped during sessions, and considered for a proposed volume marking the 200th anniversary of the Vesey Conspiracy in 2022.

Contact Info:
James O’Neil Spady, Assoc. Prof. of American History, Soka University of America
JSPADY@SOKA.EDU
https://live-carolina-lowcountry-and-atlantic-world-program.pantheonsite.io/

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: “Transforming Public History from Charleston to the Atlantic World” Call for Proposals DEADLINE EXTENSION to December 15, 2016

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CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: “Transforming Public History from Charleston to the Atlantic World” Call for Proposals DEADLINE EXTENSION to December 15, 2016

Conference website: https://live-carolina-lowcountry-and-atlantic-world-program.pantheonsite.io/conferences/2017-conference/

“Transforming Public History from Charleston to the Atlantic World” will be hosted by the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program, and the Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston on June 14-17, 2017. Conference planners are seeking proposals for workshops, roundtable discussions, panels, and individual papers from public history professionals, scholars, educators, librarians, archivists, and artists that address issues surrounding the interpretation, preservation, memorialization, commemoration, and public application of major themes in local, regional, and Atlantic World history.

For information on how to submit a proposal, please see: https://live-carolina-lowcountry-and-atlantic-world-program.pantheonsite.io/conferences/2017-conference/

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
In partnership with various local, national, and international cultural heritage organizations, academic institutions, and historic sites, the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World Program (CLAW), and the Addlestone Library are hosting a conference on transforming public history practices from Charleston to the Atlantic World to be held at the College of Charleston and other partner sites in Charleston, South Carolina, June 15-17, 2017, with a pre-conference day of workshops on June 14th.

SPECIAL FOCUS
Based on the United Nation’s declaration of 2015-2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent, and the conference location in Charleston, South Carolina, on the second anniversary of the tragic shooting at the Mother Emanuel Church, the conference will particularly highlight speakers and topics relevant to transforming practices of interpreting the history of slavery and its race and class legacies in Charleston and historically interconnected local, regional, and international sites.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE THEME
Starting in the fifteenth century, the Atlantic Ocean became a corridor of trade and migration—both voluntary and coerced—between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. In the centuries that followed, the violent encounters, power struggles, cultural exchanges, labor systems, and economic ties surrounding these trans-Atlantic connections became ever more complex and globally intertwined, producing distinctive race, class, and gender experiences and hierarchies throughout the Atlantic World and beyond. How have cultural heritage institutions, public historians, scholars, artists, activists, filmmakers, and educators in various international regions engaged with and depicted the diverse histories of the Atlantic World? How have these representations changed over time, and how will they continue to change in the twenty-first century?

QUESTIONS? Contact averyconferences@gmail.com

CFP: “Soundscapes: Music from the African Atlantic, 1600-present,” March 7-9, 2014

The Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program (CLAW) at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina invites paper proposals addressing the transnational and transcultural impacts of music throughout the Atlantic World for a conference to be held March 7-9, 2014.  We are especially interested in twentieth and twenty-first century music and cultural exchange, but the conference is open to any work that examines the movement of music in the Atlantic World from the 1600s to the present. We welcome a broad range of submissions, but especially encourage submissions that utilize an interdisciplinary approach.  Proposals may address any area of music in the Atlantic World. We invite scholars to submit proposals for individual papers and panels that address such questions as:

  • Tradition and modernity in popular and indigenous music in Latin America, the Caribbean and West Africa
  • Music, Race, and Empire
  • Jazz in a global context
  • Trans-Caribbean identities in Salsa, Reggae, and Calypso music
  • Pan-African Rhythms
  • Caribbean beats and protest music in the 1970s
  • The British Invasion and Rhythm and Blues in the United Kingdom
  • Hip Hop and political activism in Africa and the Caribbean
  • Race and Beach Music on the American Atlantic Coast
  • Musical culture and diaspora studies

Proposals Due:  Friday, December 6, 2013

All Presenters will be notified if their paper or panel has been accepted by December 22, 2013.  Presenters and participants are expected to register for the conference by February 7th, 2014.  Registration will open in October 2013.

As with previous successful CLAW program events the conference will be run in a seminar style: accepted participants will be expected to send completed papers to the organizers in advance of the conference itself (by February 28th, 2014) for circulation via password-protected site. At the conference itself presenters will talk for no more than ten minutes about their paper, working on the assumption that everyone has read the paper itself. This arrangement means that papers may be considerably lengthier and more carefully argued than the typical 20-minute presentation; and it leads to more substantive, better-informed discussion. It also generally allows us to move quite smoothly toward publication of a selection of essays with the University of South Carolina Press.

Proposals for individual papers should be 200 words, and should be accompanied by a brief one-page biographical statement indicating institutional affiliation, research interests, and relevant publishing record for each participant, including chairs and commentators. Please place the panel proposal, and its accompanying paper proposals and vitas in one file. Please submit your proposal electronically with CLAW conference in the subject line to the conference chair, Dr. John White at WhiteJ@cofc.edu by December 6, 2013.

If you wish to send a proposal for a 3 or 4 person panel, please send a 300 to 500 word proposal describing the panel as a whole as well as proposals for each of the individual papers, along with biographical statements for each of the presenters. The organizers reserve the right to accept individual papers from panel proposals, to break up panels, and to add papers to panels. Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 22nd, 2013.

CFP for The Global South Atlantic

CFP for The Global South Atlantic

Editors:
Kerry Bystrom, Bard College and ECLA of Bard (k.bystrom@eclaM.de)
Joseph R. Slaughter, Columbia University (jrs272@columbia.edu)

 

Atlantic Studies, as a field of historical, literary, visual, economic, political and cultural analysis, has tended to focus on exchanges across the North Atlantic Ocean. Transformative studies like Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic (1992) opened the field to the South by demonstrating the centrality of the slave trade and the African diaspora to any understanding of the “Atlantic World.” Yet, even that South was largely situated in the North, around systems of circulation and exchange among Africa, North America, the Caribbean and Europe. Despite the rise in oceanic, hemispheric, and regional studies in the past decade, and despite the institutional transformations of Transatlantic, Black Atlantic and Diaspora studies, the South Atlantic has not emerged as a particularly potent conceptual or analytical configuration in cultural studies; nor has it emerged as a particularly coherent social and economic image-space in geopolitics.

In this volume of collected papers, we will explore different ways of positioning Atlantic Studies in relation to the Global South, and also reflect on the conditions of possibility and impossibility for the coming into being of spaces like the Global South Atlantic. We will focus on critically exploring how artists and intellectuals from the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and other Southern zones imagine the Atlantic. Of special concern is the way individuals, governments or political movements, social imaginaries, texts or other cultural artifacts, and markets do (or do not) cross the oceanic space between Africa, Latin America, and surrounding “Southern” regions; and the larger structures of knowledge and power that enable or inhibit these flows.

We invite papers that respond directly to the problem of the Global South Atlantic by focusing specifically on events, periods, and issues that establish and reconfigure relations among peoples around the South Atlantic: charter-company colonialism; the transatlantic slave trade and abolitionism; anti-colonialism and decolonization; tricontinentalism and the non-aligned movement; Cold War dictatorships, resource extraction, and human rights internationalism; indigenous movements and dirty wars; diasporas and exiled intellectuals; transitional justice and truth commissions; regional economic and security communities. In addition, we’re interested in theoretical and historical perspectives on the (South) Atlantic from the Global South. Specific questions of interest include:

• What and where is the (Global) South Atlantic? How is it possible to map it? To position ourselves in relation to it?

• In what ways have people from the “Global South” imagined and participated in creating something called “the Atlantic” or “the Atlantic world,” from the early modern period to the present? In what ways have they been excluded from this project?

• How might thinking about the South Atlantic, understood as that expanse between Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, or understood otherwise, alter current histories and theories of the Atlantic world?

• In what ways has the South Atlantic become an actually existing zone of commercial, military, scientific, intellectual, artistic or cultural navigation and exchange? What did these exchanges look like during 18th, 19th and 20th century colonialism and anti-colonialism? During the Cold War? What do they look like in our contemporary moment of neo-liberal capitalism and globalization?

• What role have discourses like those of environmental activism, human rights and humanitarianism, or national security doctrine and other forms of militarism (think of the North (and failed South) Atlantic Treaty Organization), played in shaping relations across the Atlantic?

• What kinds of “alternative solidarities” (Popescu, Tolliver and Tolliver)–those beyond ties created through the experience of slavery–have been formed across the Atlantic ocean between North and South or South and South? How are previous forms of transnational solidarity remembered or, conversely, to what ends are they forgotten?

• How does the question of the (Global) South Atlantic impact studies of slavery and the African diaspora it created?

• How might looking at something called the “South Atlantic” help us to understand the discursive formations of Oceanisms, regionalisms, area studies, hemispheric studies, postcolonialisms, and comparative literature?

One goal of the collection is to bring together scholars working in Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic, and Lusophone literary and cultural studies, as well as researchers working in other languages–such as Arabic or indigenous languages–that are related to the (global) South Atlantic. We aim to balance contributions from these multiple linguistic areas.

Abstracts of 300 words and a short bio should be sent to both editors by September 30, 2013. Accepted authors will be notified by late October, and full drafts of accepted papers will be due by March 1, 2014. The editors plan to approach presses once the initial selection of papers has been completed.

CFP: South Carolina Historical Association 2012 Annual Meeting

The 2012 annual meeting of the SCHA will be held March 3 at the S.C. Department of Archives and History, Columbia, S.C.

Since 1931 the South Carolina Historical Association has held an annual meeting bringing historians of all backgrounds together. Although it originates in South Carolina, the Association encourages historians to submit papers on topics ranging from Southern and American history to African, European, and Asian histories. Furthermore it encourages other topics that can include history of education, science, and religion. Since its inception eighty years ago, historians have contributed papers on these and other wide ranging topics. The annual meeting provides opportunities for historians of all interests to learn from each other and share their research interests.   In the Association’s first annual meeting the topics ranged from the British South African Company, Electoral Corruption in England to the Granger Movement in South Carolina.  Proposals for complete sessions should include three and no more than four papers. Presentations are limited to twenty minutes. Papers presented are eligible for peer review for publication in the association’s journal, Proceedings. Undergraduates and their faculty mentors are welcome and will be grouped in separate sessions to the best possible extent.  All participants must be members of the SCHA. For membership dues and privileges please see http://www.palmettohistory.org/scha/htm.

Send proposals and c.v. electronically to Fritz Hamer, Ph.D. at fphamer@mailbox.sc.edu or mail to

South Caroliniana Library,
University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC  29208.

Deadline for proposals is 16 December 2011. Accepted proposals will be notified by 3 January. Deadline for submitting papers to session chairs is 3 February 2012.

CLAW CFP: Race, Gender and Sexualities in the Atlantic World Conference

March 9-11, 2012: Race, Gender, and Sexualities in the Atlantic World

Proposals Due: December 2, 2011

The Carolina Lowcountry in the Atlantic World Program (CLAW) at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC invites paper proposals addressing women, gender, and sexuality in the Atlantic World 1500-Present. The featured keynote speaker is Jennifer L. Morgan (New York University). We invite scholars to submit proposals for individual papers and panels that might address such questions as:

  • Performances of Gender
  • Gender and Discovery
  • Colonialism
  • Constructions of Sexualities
  • Native American Contact
  • Race and Gender
  • African Diaspora and Slavery

 As with previous successful CLAW program events the conference will be run in a seminar style: accepted participants will be expected to send completed papers to the organizers in advance of the conference itself (by March 1st, 2012) for circulation via password-protected site. At the conference itself presenters will talk for no more than ten minutes about their paper, working on the assumption that everyone has read the paper itself. This arrangement means that papers may be considerably lengthier and more carefully argued than the typical 20-minute presentation; and it leads to more substantive, better informed discussion. It also generally allows us to move quite smoothly toward publication of a selection of essays with the University of South Carolina Press.

 Proposals for individual papers should be 200 words, and should be accompanied by a brief one-page biographical statement indicating institutional affiliation, research interests, and relevant publishing record for each participant, including chairs and commentators. Please place the panel proposal, and its accompanying paper proposals and vitas in one file. Please submit your proposal electronically with CLAW conference in the subject line to the conference chair, Dr. Sandra Slater at slaters@cofc.edu by December 2, 2011.

 If you wish to send a proposal for a 3 or 4 person panel, please send a 300 to 500 word proposal describing the panel as a whole as well as proposals for each of the individual papers, along with biographical statements for each of the presenters. The organizers reserve the right to accept individual papers from panel proposals, to break up panels, and to add papers to panels. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 31st, 2012.

CFP: ‘Triumph in my Song’: 18th & 19th Century African Atlantic Culture, History & Performance

The Society of Early Americanists and the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland invite proposals for this exciting interdisciplinary conference, May 31-June 2, 2012.  The conference will be held in the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Maryland, College Park (just outside Washington, DC). 

PROPOSAL DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

FOR COMPLETE CFP AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION PLEASE GO TO: http://www.societyofearlyamericanists.org/conferences.html

CFP: 2012 Southern Historical Association

CfP: 2012 Southern Historical Association — Reminder with Revised Submission Deadline (9/15)

The Program Committee for the 2012 conference of the Southern Historical Association invites proposals on all topics related to the history of the American South from its pre-colonial era to today. In addition, for the 2012 meeting in Mobile, it extends a special welcome to proposals relating to:

 * Mobile and the Gulf South (including its relation to the Caribbean and N. American interior)

* International, transnational, or comparative approaches to the American South

* 2012 as an anniversary of major historical events, publications, etc. (For example: War of 1812, Civil War 1862, Election of Woodrow Wilson 1912; Equal Rights Amendment 1972-1982. Or, the historical context for the 2012 Presidential Election and the American South).

The Program Committee accepts proposals for single papers but encourages session proposals that include two or three papers.

According to SHA policy, no one who appeared on the previous two programs, those at Charlotte and Baltimore, can be part of the program in Mobile. No two people from the same institution can be on the same session.

NOTE: New Policy regarding composition of proposals for the 2012 Program: Those submitting proposals should include suggestions of people who would be appropriate as commentators/chairs but not issue invitations. The Program Committee will select and invite a chair and usually two commentators.

DEADLINE: The deadline for proposals this year is September 15, 2011.

All 2012 proposals must be submitted online: http://www.uga.edu/sha/meeting/index.htm

If you are interested in submitting a session for the Latin American and Caribbean Section, please visit their web site: http://ww2.tnstate.edu/lacs/

2012 Program Committee Co-Chairs: Don Doyle and Marjorie Spruill, University of South Carolina don.doyle@sc.edu marjorie.spruill@sc.edu

Call for Papers: Converse College Conference on Southern Culture

High Culture/Low Culture, Southern Culture

April 11 – 14, 2012

Converse College in Spartanburg, SC, is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the Converse College Conference on Southern Culture.

 

The focus of this conference is the “big picture” of southern culture, from okra to opera. We are particularly interested in the intersections of “high” and “low” culture in the South, and the ways in which the rich working class and folk elements of southern culture have, in many instances, been reinterpreted, and, some might argue, appropriated, by more traditionally high cultural mediums.  We invite papers that examine the unique qualities of diverse southern cultures, interrogate the threads that bind these cultures together, and, we anticipate, propose divergent ways of thinking about the South.

 

The academic conference will be a key component in a weeklong conversation about modern southern culture that will include featured speakers, panel discussions, literary readings and musical performances.

 

Writers Lee Smith and Hal Crowther will be the keynote speakers.  We invite papers from scholars and professionals working in the fields of Literary Studies, History, Religion, performing arts, and southern foodways, and we hope to use conference papers as the basis for scholarly collection of essays. This conference will continue a proud tradition of “studying the South” at Converse College.  In the spring of 1962, the Southern Literary Festival met at Converse and featured Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Cleanth Brooks, among others.  On the fiftieth anniversary of that event, we propose to examine, not just southern literature, but the wide range of elements of southern culture.

 

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Religious traditions in the south
  • High southern church/low southern church Non-Christians in the south
  • Contemporary southern drama, or the lack of it
  • Visual arts
  • Food security issues in the modern rural south
  • Images of the south in popular culture
  • Urban/agrarian/southern
  • Folk arts
  • The role of food in southern culture:  church, family, community, etc.
  • Women are cooks and men are chefs:  gender and food
  • Why not southern?  Does regional mean provincial? Or does it mean a strong sense of place?
  • Southern cuisine as haute cuisine
  • The evolving role of race in shaping southern culture
  • Immigrants and southern culture
  • Southern musical traditions

 

Please send 250 word abstract as an email attachment, along with a brief CV (Word or PDF, please) to:

 

Anita Rose, Conference Co-chair
Associate Professor and Chair of the English Dept.
E-mail:  Anita.rose@converse.edu

 

Deadline: November 1, 2011