Preliminary Program nd 62 Annual Meeting Being, Belonging and Becoming in Africa Thursday, November 21 – Saturday, November 23, 2019 Boston Marriott Copley Place Boston, MA Program Committee Chairs: Matthew Heaton, Virginia Tech James Ogude, University of Pretoria Local Arrangements Committee Chairs: Abel Djassi Amado, Simmons University Rita Kiki Edozie, University of Massachusetts, Boston Kwamina Panford, Northeastern University Eric J. Schmidt, Boston University Preliminary Program uploaded October 15, 2019 Please review the final information for your name badge, no later than the c.o.b. Friday, October 18th. Information will be finalized for priting and will be immutable thereafter. If you would like to request a change, please contact us at
[email protected]. Program Theme The theme of this year’s Annual Meeting is “Being, Belonging and Becoming in Africa.” While Africa is not and never has been homogenous or unitary, the existence of the ASA is predicated on the idea that there are things that distinguish “Africa” and “Africans” from other peoples and places in the world, and that those distinctions are worth studying. In a world increasingly preoccupied with tensions over localism, nationalism, and globalism, in which so many forms of essentialism are under existential attack (and fighting back), we hope that this theme will spark scholarly reflection on what it has meant and currently means for people, places, resources, ideas, knowledge, among others to be considered distinctly “African.” As scholars have grappled with the conceptual and material effects of globalization, the various disciplines of African Studies have also embraced transnational, international, and comparative approaches in recent decades.