Global Africa Conversations Series
What does it mean to read Africa from the global and the global from Africa? The central purpose of the transdisciplinary Global Africa Conversations series is to convene cutting-edge scholarship and ideas which interrogate the ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies, geographies, praxes, and imaginaries of centering Africa within policy and intellectual discourses of global salience and remit.
Essentially, this timely series of critical conversations reimagines what it means to consider the peoples, experiences and knowledges of Africa as the pivot for the understanding and resolution of major questions of global importance relating to development, social justice, knowledge production, gender equality, race and racism, climate change, peace, conflict and security, popular cultures, decolonization, migration, and globalization, to mention a few. It challenges received knowledges about Africa and probes the epistemological foundations of the disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences. It aims to recenter and reinscribe Africa in the humanities and social sciences, within studies of Africa and the African diaspora, and in the consideration of major global problems. This series shuns an essentialist conception of Africa and defines Africa in the broadest terms possible to include continental Africa, its islands, and peoples and cultures of African descent dispersed globally. It suggests that Africa’s participation, voice, and leadership are inimitable components of the global search for progress and a better future for all humanity.
The Global Africa Conversations series continues in the renowned critical inquiry and social justice traditions of Brandeis University and the African and African American Studies (AAAS) Department. This multi-modal series will regularly focus on the subjects and debates that animate global conversations and interdisciplinary studies, providing a forum for their discussion and disentanglement with reference to insights and perspectives from African Studies and its constitutive fields.
The series is hosted by the African and African American Studies (AAAS) Department at Brandeis University. Contact Dr Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso (olaj@brandeis.edu) for more information.