CFP Contemporary Black Literature Series II

CFP 2012: CBL ~Contemporary Series II
Call for Abstracts /Submissions

The 2012 Journal of Literature Series II (JAL #9)

IN the JAL 8 Contemporary Series I featuring the oral-written interface in Achebe's fictions, which reveals how folk materials revise the anthropological discourse of the West through which African cultures were inferioritized by juxtaposing an alternative idiom�of African orature−with its own unique manner of structuring reality that might offer a way of ending Africa's discursive indentureship to the West, we had gone further to examine the status of the oral performer in African traditional societies who encouraged a wide range of human expression to create identity for members of the community Africa. We proposed a challenge to sustain the methods of creative transmission through these African performers who are living proofs of the survival of african oral traditions, especially in the propulsion of communicative action and the communicative strength of men, women and children in the community. We argued that European imperialism led to the most widespread disruption of communities in the world, resulting in a society haunted by the loss of values and historical opportunities that could have held together the communities, and depicted how even the linguistic relationship in a novel could be manipulated to overcome the crisis of identity caused by the intruding foreign culture. We drew a nexus between the aesthetic of the novel and the social experience that nurtures the literary consciousness of the writer showing how the fictionist imbues his art with a social vision that seeks to deconstruct elitist colonial apparatuses in favour of progressive ideals for socio-economic rebirth.

Contemporary Series II

Series II is also committed to deeper investigations of black identities in modern black texts, and the commemoration of ancestral heritage for its capacity to redeem the dead and forgotten past. The Contemporary Series II of the Journal of African Literature #9 will further pursue the permutation of Black literary traditions within the continent and beyond, providing the comparative bridge for the eternal communion of black literary and mythological heritage which inhere in resuscitating the past as a means of restoring lost values. It proposes a Forum on some of the finest poetic, religious thoughts and legacies of Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus), also known as the Egyptian god of writing, while exploring theoretical frameworks of propagating indigenous knowledge about the Black experience, the tensions of space and identity at various political, social, economic and psychological levels of African national existence, and their possible remediation through imaginative ideological fusions that are embedded in the external and subjective realities of our world today.

As usual, contributions from scholars of Black and African writing are welcome and researchers prepared and willing to work with the editors in propagation of African thought and aesthetic.

Selected Reading from the Journal of African Literature and Culture, No. 8, 2011:

Anjali Gera Roy. �Oral-Written Interface: The Folktale in Achebe�s Fiction�;

Divine Neba Che. "Tradition and Creation: Oral Performance among the Graffi"
Clive Ilami-Crama. "�The Lost Voice�: Rumuji Women Dance in Nigeria"
Sura Khrais. "Can the Subaltern Speak? Language and the Crisis of Identity in Nadine Gordimer�s July�s People."
Jairus Omuteche. "Identity and Belonging in the Novels of Ngugi and Vassanji."
Jude Agho and 'Dele Bamidele. "Fiction as Praxis: Exploring Iyayi�s Marxist Aesthetics."

Submissions Guidelines:

Original abstracts of no more than 600 words showing topic, intended arguments and their relevance to the discourse theme or subcategory should be submitted by Microsoft Word attachment for approval to [email protected] or to [email protected]

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Download free PDF: "Re-visioning African Writing"