The Collegium for African American Research conference, Liverpool – Mobilising Memory: Creating African Atlantic Identities

Hat Tip: Angela Shaw

JUNE 24-28 2015, LIVERPOOL UNITED KINGDOM

Liverpool is home to one of the oldest and largest Black British communities. The city itself has a chequered history as Britain’s largest slave port with a legacy of conflicted race relations. As one of the most important port cities of the Atlantic world, Liverpool grew financially rich on the proceeds. The city has also been enriched culturally through the role it has played in forming and framing black communities throughout the diaspora. Liverpool has itself been shaped by the cultures of this diaspora. The city’s rich musical culture (formed in part from African American roots) and vernacular energy give a unique and dynamic quality to discussions about cultural creativity. Its rich heritage, together with the vibrancy and malleability of Liverpool, have led CAAR to hold its 11th biannual conference on “Mobilising Memory: Creating African Atlantic Identities” at Liverpool Hope University.

Our conference recognises the importance of memory and memorialisation. We want to encourage papers about memory that see it as an active, ideological and often political process which communities and individual black subjects have used as a mobilising tool to counter hegemonic ideas and societal hierarchies in all areas of the African Atlantic and beyond. Papers can be about the physical action of mobility, addressing the long history of travel narratives in African Atlantic culture—including those where the experience is that of being “always elsewhere” (D’Aguiar)—or it can take mobilising as being more politically attuned and related to the way memory is used as a tool for changing consciousness and for creating homespace in the diaspora. The memory of slavery in the host city of Liverpool is so all-pervasive that its very bricks and mortar were said to be steeped in the blood of the trade. Activists both in the city and beyond have counteracted amnesia by mobilising culturally and politically against such wilful forgetting. The conference comes on the 50th Anniversary of Malcolm X’s final visit to Britain; his intervention in domestic and international racial politics during that sojourn is an exemplar of the local and global implications of memories of black presence creating new transnational realities in the face of global oppression.

CAAR2015@hope.ac.uk

CAAR Conference 2015
Liverpool Hope University
Hope Park
Liverpool
L16 9JD
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Registration and Accommodation

Registration is now open via the online store. Please ensure that you register under the correct category. Some categories are password protected; if you are a student and need a password and have not received one by 5pm today please email caar2015@hope.ac.uk with some proof that you are a student to request one.

In the registration process you will be able to reserve your on-campus accommodation, add on extras, and state any other additional requirements. If you wish to stay off-campus, please see the Visit Liverpool website for other accommodation. Two local off-campus hotels include the Childwall Abbey and the Penny Lane Hotel, both are walking distance to the conference.

General Registration: for all presenting and non-presenting delegates who are not students. Not password protected.

Student – not presenting: for all students who are not presenting a paper. Password protected, email us with some proof of you being a student to receive the password.

Student – presenting: for all students who are presenting a paper. Password protected, if you haven’t yet received a password please email us.

Hope post grads: for all Hope post grads. Password protected, email  us with proof you are a Hope student for a password.

Day rates: for all who are not attending the full conference. Not password protected.

About CAAR

The Collegium of African American Research (CAAR) was founded at the University of the Sorbonne Nouvelle in 1992 and incorporated at the University of Rome later that year. From its inception it has worked to stimulate research in African American Studies in Europe and beyond. CAAR promotes intellectual collaboration through the creation of an international and interdisciplinary research and teaching network. CAAR organizes bi-annual conferences, sponsors local symposia, helps to create research networks, and supports publications, most prominently its FORECAAST Series (Forum for European Contributions in African American Studies).

The first volume of the FORECAAST series was issued by Lit Verlag in 1999, and for its twentieth volume, the series moved to the University of Liverpool Press. Begun as an occasional publication of monographs and themed, selected conference papers, the Series has always sought to highlight the best recent scholarship in the field. In 2013, FORECAAST became an annual publication of CAAR, reflecting the growth of the organisation and the richness of the scholarship produced by its members.

CAAR is a financially independent, international organization of African-American and Black Diaspora scholars from over 25 countries, including the US, Canada, Japan, China, several African countries and all European countries. Members come from a range of disciplines including literature, history, cultural studies, film studies, social sciences, as well as from queer studies and gender studies.

The membership is made up equally of professors, students, and individual researchers and activists outside the academy. Due to the location of the current presidency, CAAR activities are primarily run out of University of Bremen.