LANDSCAPES, SOURCES, AND

INTELLECTUAL PROJECTS IN AFRICAN

HISTORY: RETHINKING HISTORICAL
EVIDENCE AND ITS INTERPRETATION
12-14 NOVEMBER 2015
Department of African Studies and Anthropology (DASA) and Centre
of West African Studies (CWAS), University of Birmingham
Call for Papers
What types of evidence, data, and sources can we use to expand
knowledge of the African past? How can different types of evidence
be critically analysed - be they landmarks on African landscapes or
faded texts produced by authors unfolding specific intellectual and
political projects? These are some of the questions that have
animated the work of Dr. Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias for five
decades. On 12-14 November 2014 the Department of African
Studies and Anthropology (DASA) and Centre of West African Studies
(CWAS) of the University of Birmingham (UK) will host a symposium
aimed at confronting these questions and speaking to issues that
have been central to Dr. De Moraes Farias scholarship.
As a very special opening to the symposium, Dr. De Moraes Farias
has accepted to give the third Fage Lecture on Thursday 12
November 2015 at 5pm. His lecture will be followed by a reception
and the two subsequent days will feature workshop-style panels and
plenary sessions. These panels will serve both as a broader
reflection on Dr. De Moraes Farias engagement with these themes,
and as an important opportunity for a renewed engagement with
the sources for the African past at a moment of flux in African
historiography.
We invite submissions of panels and/or papers focusing on any of
the themes listed below or generally related to Dr. De Moraes Farias
research.
Symposium themes
1) Demythologising the African past: what are the enduring myths
that distort the interpretation of Africa's history? What explains the
existence and endurance of these myths? What are their
consequences for historical reconstruction and for knowledge of
contemporary African dynamics?

2) Historicising African myth: myths are filled with clues. They reveal
moral values, aesthetic judgments, and salient themes in the
popular imaginary of African societies that provide insights into a
past often left unrecorded. What are the historical and cultural
dynamics that influence the production, circulation, and
transformation of African myths?
3) Accounting for context: Beyond accounting for the language and
culture of the authors of our sources, how can we integrate a
consideration of other factors such as the reckoning of time,
awareness of landscapes, landmarks, and the material and
immaterial world in the study and interpretation of sources of the
African past?
4) Revealing the projects behind the sources: Paulo Fernando de
Moraes Farias urges us to think of African sources be they textual,
oral, or epigraphic - as the products of the biographic, intellectual,
and political trajectories of their authors. Can we use sources as
avenues for reconstructing the intellectual projects of their authors,
and the discursive fields in which these authors operated?
5) Developing a historiographic ethics based on a genuine
hermeneutical stance in historical exegesis. How can researchers
write in a way that reveals the justification in the Others point of
view (and makes us doubt our own)?
6) Contributions related to any of the regional and theoretical lines
of inquiry that have animated Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias
work, including Yoruba, Tuareg, and Songhay oral history; epigraphy;
research in medieval Mali, Benin, and Mauritania; jihadist and nonjihadist Islam; Afrocentrism; critical reassessments of North and
West African historiography; etc.
Submission of abstracts
Submissions of papers should include authors name, affiliation,
contact details, paper title, abstract of no more than 200 words.
Panel proposals should be submitted by panel organisers and
include complete information for all of the papers included in the
panel.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 31 January 2015.
There is no registration fee. The conference will take place in the
University of Birminghams campus. Participants are expected to
make their own travel and accommodation arrangements and to
purchase their own meals. DASA will offer coffee/tea breaks and
invite all participants to the reception that will follow the Fage
Lecture on the evening of Thursday 12 November.

Please send your abstract(s) to Dr. Benedetta Rossi,

b.rossi@bham.ac.uk
Submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the organising committee
(Prof. Karin Barber, Dr. Toby Green, and Dr. Benedetta Rossi).
Acceptance of selected abstracts will be confirmed in March 2015.