The Arts Council of the African Studies Association Newsletter, Volume 87, Winter 2011 NEWSLETTER ACASA Board of Directors Jean Borgatti, President ( term ends 2011 ) Presidential Notes 2 Bill Dewey, Past President ( term ends 2011 ) Steven Nelson, Vice-President ( term ends 2011 ) Message from the Editor 2 Carol Magee, Secretary/Treasurer ( term ends 2012 ) Joyce Youmans, Chief Newsletter Editor ( term ends 2012 ) Conferences & Symposia 3 Karen Milbourne ( term ends 2012 ) Monica Visona ( term ends 2011 ) Calls for Papers & Essays 3 Chika Okeke-Agulu ( term ends 2012 ) John McCall ( term ends 2011 ) Exhibitions 6 Allen F. Roberts ( term ends 2011 ) Ruth Simbao ( term ends 2012 ) Current Publications 9 All correspondence regarding membership information Media & Internet Resources 10 and payment of dues should be directed to: Carol Magee Picture This 12 ACASA Secretary/Treasurer Dept. of Art Member News 13 University of North Carolina CB 3405 Announcements 13 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3405 Email: [email protected] Opportunities 16 Membership information is available in the “Join ACASA” Calls for Participation 18 section of this Newsletter. Obituaries 18 ACASA Meeting Minutes 19 The ACASA Newsletter is published three times a year: Spring/Summer, Fall, and Winter. The Newsletter seeks ACASA Election Information 21 items of interest for publication, including news about con - ferences and symposia, new publications, exhibitions, job Preliminary 2011 Triennial Program 24 changes, fieldwork, and travel. The next ACASA Newslet - ter will be Spring/Summer 2011. Please send news items Join ACASA 37 by May 11, 2011, to: Joyce Youmans, Chief Newsletter Editor About ACASA 38 [email protected] Deadlines for Submission of News Items Acknowledgement: Graphics featured in the head - for the 2010 Newsletters : ings of this Newsletter were drawn by Tami Wroath Spring/Summer 2011 May 11, 2011 based on designs found on artworks in the collection Fall 2011 September 14, 2011 of the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida. Winter 2012 January 18, 2012 That being said, I would again like to thank my Board and Presidential Notes the Triennial Committee in Los Angeles for their hard work and for making it possible for me to concentrate on per - sonal goals within ACASA, notably putting the Triennial on As I prepare to hand over the responsibility of ACASA to track (getting commitments for 2014 and 2017) so that we Steven Nelson, who has been my President Elect and is can truly plan ahead. I would like to thank the member - Chair of the Triennial Committee in Los Angeles, I cannot ship, too, for coming out in force to join or re-join what re - thank him and his local committee as well as my Board mains the pre-eminent organization in our collective fields, enough. We have accomplished a great deal: using tech - and also for supporting the Triennial. nology to enhance our communication with each other and across the entire membership; bringing back an electoral See you in L.A. process for selecting the organization’s leadership; and planning a Triennial that will be even more successful than its predecessor. (Each Triennial has been a hard act to fol - —Jean Borgatti, President low, but, somehow, each Triennial has developed a mem - orable personality!) Elections: We will be adding four new Board members from whom the President Elect will be appointed by the current ACASA Board. We do have 5 candidates for the 4 slots (we had hoped for more, but next time…), so we will Message from the Editor be holding an e-election through a service called ballotbin.com. Each of our members may now cast a vote, Information about the upcoming Triennial can be found not simply ratify a slate. Please look at the candidates’ throughout this Newsetter—in Jean Borgatti’s Presidential statements and qualifications included in this Newsletter Notes, at the begninning of the “Announcements” section (pages 21-23), and vote. Information and directions will be (page 13), and in the Preliminary Program that begins on sent out via email to you—and you will have at least sev - page 24. eral weeks to get your votes in. Speaking of elections, I hope those of you who are mem - Thank you to everyone who contributed items to this bers of CAA (College Art Association) voted in the current Newsletter. I also would like to thank those who sent pho - election—one of our own, dele jegede, was running. And tos for the “Picture This” section, and David Riep for gath - when the ASA (African Studies Association) elections ering the photos and designing the ACASA logo featured open later in the Spring, I hope that those of you who are on the first page. David and I encourage members to sub - members will vote for two of us who are running for the mit photos for future Newsletters. (Please see the “Calls Board— Patrick McNaughton (for President Elect) and me for Participation” section on page 18 for details.) (Board member)—and you all know that I will continue being a mosquito buzzing in ASA’s ear about the organiza - The next Newsletter will be published in spring 2011, with tion of expressive culture panels and making the audio-vi - a May 11th deadline for item submissions. sual equipment that we bring easier to share. Have a great Triennial! The Triennial looms, and we do have wonderful news to report. Thanks to the efforts of Monica Visona and Steven —Joyce Youmans, Chief Newsletter Editor Nelson, ACASA has been awarded (through UCLA) a major Getty grant that will help us bring 15 African col - leagues to the U.S.—not only for the Triennial but for ex - periencing the L.A. art world, networking, and capacity building with regard to publishing. That money has freed up all the money allocated by ACASA (but there’s always more needed, so if you have gotten your income tax re - bate early, we can still put it to good use!) to use to help even more African colleagues as well as graduate stu - dents come to the conference. Doran Ross and his committee have organized a program despite his trenchant (and quite legitimate) remarks about how many of us do not understand the meaning of the words ‘deadline’ and ‘membership’ or do not know how to count the number of words in an abstract…. A preliminary version is published in this Newsletter. 2 Princeton University and co-author of Contemporary Conferences & Symposia African Art Since 1980 , will deliver the keynote address. Graduate Symposium: 1st Annual Indiana University Graduate Student in Saturday, April 23, 2011 9:30AM – 5:30PM African Studies Symposium: Cultural Traces, Places and Cyberspaces: African Modernity and Identity in the Era of New Media 2nd Kumasi Biennial Symposium: Community Arts in Indiana University, Bloomington Focus April 2, 2011 Kumasi and the Nearby Village of Abetenim in the Ashanti Region of Ghana Indiana University’s Graduate Students in African Studies July 16 - August 6, 2011 are proud to announce their first annual symposium, “Cul - tural Traces, Places and Cyberspaces: African Modernity This 3-week event will focus on community arts practice and Identity in the Era of New Media,” which will take as a response to the growing problem of the widening gap place on Saturday, April 2, 2011, at Indiana University’s between contemporary African artists and the rural com - Bloomington campus. munity. We will use Kumasi City-Abetenim rural sites such as market places, local schools, village centers, and oth - This first symposium will be dedicated to an interdiscipli - ers as laboratories for workshops, artistic interventions, nary topic that will promote dialogue on ideas of new site-specific installations, lectures, and other community- media, and how media provides an avenue through which based approaches from around the world. Thus, we invite identity can be asserted. Africans are establishing their individual or group submissions for community theatre, own ideas of modernity by utilizing various types of “mod - media arts, readings, film screening, slide shows, open ern” media, such as internet forums (social networking studios, visual activism, musical performances, community sites, e.g. Facebook and Twitter), smart technology, and design, social architecture, and others to allow the rural digital devices as well as older forms of media which in - community to become acquainted with international con - clude radio, television, and magazines that have become temporary artistic practice. more dynamic than ever before due to the participatory nature that media has assumed. The symposium will ex - This project is only open to serious applicants. For addi - plore how new media influences concepts and under - tional information or to register, send an e-mail to standings of modernity and identity in Africa. Additionally, it [email protected] and/or [email protected]. will examine how new media provides anonymity or self- The project web site is: www.nkafoundation.org . recognition for those seeking it, while still acting as a space for cultural expression. Thus, the symposium seeks to address questions such as How is Africa employing new media to assert identity, modernity, and culture? What forms of media are they utilizing to do so? and How does place, such as the rural and urban context, affect partici - pation? Calls for Papers & Essays Critical Encounters: A Graduate Student Symposium Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on in Honor of Sidney Littlefield Kasfir Africa and the African Diaspora: Creativity and Cul - Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia tural Expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora April 22 - 23, 2011 Conference Centre, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria July 4 - 6, 2011 Throughout her career Dr. Sidney L. Kasfir has sought to rethink the way scholars, artists, museums, and viewers We are inviting scholars to submit conference papers and understand and categorize African art.