Mid-America Alliance for African Studies

25th Annual Meeting
Mid-America Alliance for African Studies
October 29 and October 30, 2021
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR

Negotiating Foreign Actors and Influences:
Reconsidering African Engagements with the World Beyond

The Mid-America Alliance for African Studies (MAAAS) invites paper proposals for its 2020 annual conference, which revolves around Africa’s historical and contemporary engagements with a wide array of external actors and influences. Although the continent remained largely impenetrable for centuries, eventually outsiders began making their way into the vast interior in ever-increasing numbers, producing a range of outcomes for resident populations. Going forward, during the colonial period Africans were compelled to interact with an assortment of alien individuals and cultures. Today, through personal contacts and a diverse collection of media platforms, Africans daily engage with a variety of external actors, including foreign tourists, investors, soldiers, aid workers, and missionaries, while also being exposed to powerful cultural influences that derive from well beyond the continent’s borders. This conference aims to examine the myriad ways that Africans have creatively negotiated these various external actors and factors, thereby continuing to challenge dichotomous colonial and post-colonial understandings of these engagements, including resistance-collaboration and acceptance-rejection, in order to highlight the increasingly complex relationships that Africans actively forge with the rest of the world. MAAAS encourages proposals that complicate reductive narratives of these engagements and explore the ways that Africans have gainfully navigated their interactions with the non-African world.

We invite scholars from across the disciplines interested in Africa to participate and also welcome African-themed papers that explore topics beyond the thematic scope of the conference.

Please submit a 250-word abstract or panel description by August 15, 2021 for early registration and register for the MAAAS 2021 Conference.

For additional information, please contact:

Mary Mba, MAAAS President
mmba@cottey.edu