Africa in Motion: Global Health, Markets, and Human Rights
February 6-7, 2009, at Northwestern University
Since its inception in 1948, the Program of African Studies has brought together scholars from all disciplines of study and from all over the world to Northwestern University, making it a hub for research on Africa and the Diaspora. This confluence of disciplines brings together different focuses, methods of study, and theories. It is this cross-fertilization of information that has became the actualization of Melville Herskovits' vision.
In the mid-twentieth century, when Herskovits founded the Program of African Studies, the topics of research at the time were much different than those of today. Today, studies pertaining to Africa and the Diaspora are less about documenting 'exotic' cultures isolated from the rest of the world and more about understanding things like social movements, globalization, governance, human rights, global health and business.
This interdisciplinary two-day conference focuses on some of the key issues in African Studies today while reflecting on each topic as an issue that originated from a moment in history and that will continue to develop in different directions in the future. The conference will involve established and up-and-coming scholars, graduate and undergraduate students from all disciplines. Participants will be drawn from the humanities as well as from the law and business sectors.
Dress, Popular Culture, and Social Action
March 13-14, 2009, at Northwestern University
How does dress in particular and popular culture in general constitute and inspire social action? The dressed body readily becomes a flash point of conflicting values, fueling contests in historical encounters, in interactions across class, between genders and generations, and in recent global cultural, and economic exchanges. Popular culture as mass circulations of expressive forms rising from day-to-day discourse and action becomes the real and imagined reflections of the complicity and contestation, the desire and discontent, of power and it machinations. This interdisciplinary conference focuses on the dynamic range of micro and macro social action and how it is generated, sustained, and may culminate into transnational social movements that are enlivened by dress and popular culture.
This two-day event will involve established and up-and-coming scholars (graduate students) in presentations, visual, and performance events.
Keynote Address by Bennetta Jules-Rosette
Abstract
Biographical Sketch: Bennetta Jules-Rosette
To register please email african-studies@northwestern.edu or call 847-491-7323. Please contact PAS with any questions about this conference.
