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The ASA invites proposals for panels, papers, roundtables and posters that examine current scholarship and debates in all areas of African Studies. The Program Committee welcomes submissions from Africanist professionals and scholars at all stages in their careers. The ASA will host a series of events at this years meeting directed toward graduate students and beginning scholars. Proposals are particularly encouraged that focus on this years theme:

REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMISSION Membership dues and the pre-registration fee or the non-member pre-registration fee must be paid for ALL participants before a Panel, Paper, Roundtable, or Poster Session proposal can be submitted. GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING PANEL, ROUNDTABLE AND PAPER PROPOSALS Each individual may make only one presentation, as a paper presenter, a roundtable participant, a poster session presenter, or a discussant. Individuals may chair one panel or roundtable in addition to making one presentation. The ASA online system will not allow the submission of more than one Panel, Paper, Roundtable, or Poster Session proposal per individual. Only complete proposals will be reviewed by the Program Committee. A coauthor may not be added after a paper has been accepted by the Program Committee.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES: All proposals must be submitted on line at www.africanstudies.org. Proposals sent by email, hard copy, or fax cannot be accepted. PANEL PROPOSALS A panel typically has a chair, three or four paper presenters, and a discussant. A panel proposal consists of the Panel Proposal form, the panel abstract, and a Paper Proposal form with an abstract for each paper presenter. The panel abstract should consist of a statement about the topic and a brief summary of the main argument(s) to be explored (approximately one paragraph, or 8-10 sentences). The quality of the panel abstract is the main criterion for acceptance; a panel with a weak abstract or with two or more weak paper abstracts is unlikely to be accepted. PLEASE NOTE: The Program Committee may add individual papers to a proposed panel and/or a discussant if one has not been indicated. Please note that in addition to the chairs submission of the overall panel, each individual presenter must login to the online submission system and submit their individual abstract. If

African Studies Association

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Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Douglass Campus 132 George Street New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1400 Tel: 732-932-8173 ~ Fax: 732-932-3394 Web Site: www.africanstudies.org

AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION 53rd ANNUAL MEETING Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, CA November 18-21, 2010 Program Committee Chair: Mamadou Diouf, Columbia University CALL FOR PROPOSALS
DEADLINE: MARCH 31, 2010

AFRICAN DIASPORA AND DIASPORAS IN AFRICA

individuals fail to do so, they will be dropped from the panel during the program review. Also, please note that each presenter who will submit a paper to the panel must be preregistered for the annual meeting in addition to the panel chair. PAPER PROPOSALS/POSTER SESSION PROPOSALS The Paper Proposal form should be completed for each paper that is being proposed for a panel or for individual submission. The paper or poster session abstract should consist of a statement about the topic, the nature and extent of the research on which the paper or poster session is based and a brief summary of the main argument(s) (approximately one paragraph, or 8-10 sentences). The quality of the paper or poster session abstract is the main criterion for acceptance. The Program Committee will create panels from individual submissions with common themes and identify a panel chair and, if possible, a discussant. Individual proposals may also be added to proposed panels at the discretion of the Program Committee. Potential presenters are strongly encouraged to develop panel proposals. ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS A roundtable typically consists of a chair and three to five presenters. A roundtable proposal consists of the Roundtable Proposal form, the roundtable abstract, and the proposed roundtable participants. The roundtable abstract should consist of a statement about the topic and a brief summary of the main argument(s) to be explored (approximately one paragraph, or 8-10 sentences). The quality of the roundtable abstract is the main criterion for acceptance. A roundtable with a weak abstract is unlikely to be accepted. Please note that each individual who will present on the roundtable must be registered for the Annual Meeting. INDICATING A SUBMISSION CATEGORY All proposals should designate the category for which the proposal is most appropriate. There are two types of categories listed: those within the general program theme and general categories for proposals that are not specific to the conference theme. All proposals are reviewed by the Category Chair(s), who, together with the Program Chair, constitute the Program Committee. COORDINATE ORGANIZATION PROPOSALS ASA Coordinate Organizations may submit one proposal for a panel or roundtable to be accepted without review by the Program Committee. Coordinate organizations may also organize submission of additional panel or roundtable proposals that will be evaluated by the Program Committee like other submissions. All proposals must be submitted on or before the Call for Proposals deadline of March 31, 2010. ASA POLICY ON PROPOSAL ACCEPTANCES The Program Chair, working with the Program Committee, has final responsibility for accepting or declining Annual Meeting proposals in accordance with guidelines that have been established by the ASA Board of Directors. All paper proposals will be reviewed separately, whether they have been submitted individually or as part of a panel. The Program Committee makes every effort to keep panels intact but in order to accommodate as many papers as possible and to enhance the overall quality of the program changes must sometimes be made in the composition of panels. Efforts will be made to contact the chair of the panel affected by a change when it is made.

NOTIFICATION Accepted proposals will be listed in the Preliminary Program, which will appear on the ASA website, www.africanstudies.org in July. Notice that the Preliminary Program has been posted to the website will be sent via email.

AFRICA RESIDENT REQUESTS TO PAY ONSITE Africa residents who experience difficulty in paying their pre-registration fees online may request to pay pre-registration onsite. Payment for membership dues cannot be made onsite at the Annual Meeting and must be paid in order to receive member benefits including the discounted member pre-registration rate. Member benefits will not be active until membership payment has been received and processed. The pre-registration rate will be based upon the membership status at the time of the request. All requests to pay pre-registration fees onsite from Africa residents are automatically granted upon receipt of the required information which can be found, along with instructions for submission, on the ASA website at : http://www.africanstudies.org/p/cm/ld/fid=46 Individuals submitting a proposal should submit their request on or before March 24, 2010 to ensure access to the online Call for Proposal system prior to the deadline. All requests will be reviewed and processed. Upon approval, individuals will receive a confirmation email and will be able to participate in the online Call for Proposal process. Individuals who plan to attend the Annual Meeting and are not submitting a proposal should submit their request on or before September 30, 2010. Please Note: All requests to pay pre-registration onsite from Africa residents are automatically granted upon receipt of the required information which can be found, along with instructions at http://www.africanstudies.org/p/cm/ld/fid=46. Other prospective participants who do not reside in the US may contact the Secretariat at members@africanstudies.org if they are unable to submit funds from overseas because of difficulties in obtaining foreign currency. LETTERS OF INVITATION The ASA will provide a Letter of Invitation to assist individuals in expediting visas and securing funding. A request for a Letter of Invitation can be made by sending an email to annualmeeting@africanstudies.org with Letter of Invitation in the subject line. If you need a letter of invitation, you should submit a request at the same time that you submit your paper/panel/roundtable proposal. Please note: The ASA cannot guarantee that requests received after September 30, 2010 will be honored. CO-AUTHORS RESIDING IN AFRICA Co-authors who reside in Africa and who WILL NOT be attending the Annual Meeting are not required to pay pre-registration fees. Requests to waive payment for a non-attending Africa resident co-author will be granted upon receipt of written contact via email with NonAttending Africa-Resident Co-Author in the subject line at members@africanstudies.org or via fax at 732-932-3394. Please include the co-authors full name, institution or affiliation name, and contact information. Requests to waive payment for a non-attending Africa resident co-author must be submitted on or before March 24, 2010. REFUND POLICY Individuals whose paper, panel, poster, or roundtable proposal has been declined and who will not be attending the meeting may request a refund of their pre-registration fee. These requests must be made in writing via email to members@africanstudies.org or via fax at 732-932-3394. Membership dues cannot be refunded. Membership dues and preregistration fees are not transferrable. NON-ATTENDANCE/WITHDRAWALS Presenters should notify the Secretariat in writing as soon as possible if they will not be able to attend. The information will be included in the Final Program or in the Final Program addendum. Replacement presenters cannot be added after the Call for Proposals has closed.

REPLACEMENT CHAIRS If a person assigned as a Panel or Roundtable Chair cannot attend the Annual Meeting, the replacement chair will be selected from the other panel/roundtable presenters on the basis of alphabetical order by last name. Efforts will be made to contact the chair of the panel affected by a change when it is made. ACCESS POLICY The African Studies Association is committed to ensuring that its services and meetings are accessible to all Africanists. If you have any special needs or require special assistance to participate in an ASA event, please contact Kimme Carlos, Program Manager, Annual Meeting Services, at 932-732-8173 x15 or by email at Kimme.carlos@africanstudies.org. AUDIO VISUAL EQUIPMENT Due to the rapidly increasing costs charged by hotels for AV equipment, the ASA is no longer able to provide projection or sound equipment. However, each meeting room will have a screen. Presenters may arrange to rent AV equipment through the ASAs contracted AV vendor. Please consult the contact information that will be on this page on or before August 15, 2010. Presenters are also encouraged to bring their own AV projection equipment onsite. The ASA understands the importance of AV support for many presenters and the Association is working to develop strategies to facilitate AV support. GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER PRIZE The ASA Board of Directors established the Graduate Student Paper Prize in 2001 to recognize the best graduate student paper presented at the previous year's Annual Meeting. All papers presented by graduate students at the Annual Meeting are eligible for the prize, which is awarded at the subsequent Annual Meeting. The editors of the African Studies Review will coordinate an expedited peer review process for possible publication of the prize-winning paper. Graduate students may submit their paper with a letter of recommendation from their advisor postmarked on or before April 1 of the year following the Annual Meeting to: Graduate Student Paper Prize Competition, African Studies Association, Rutgers University, Douglass Campus, 132 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1400, or emailed as a PDF attachment to publications@africanstudies.org.

2010 ANNUAL MEETING THEME STATEMENT AFRICAN DIASPORA AND DIASPORAS IN AFRICA Mamadou Diouf, Middle East, South Asian &African Studies and History Departments Director, Institute of African Studies Columbia University What relevance does the concept diaspora hold today for the study of Africa? The primary objective of this years theme, African Diasporas and Diasporas in Africa, is to take up this question, and to revisit the concept of diaspora from the perspective of the African continent to assess its application and utility today in the study of Africa and a broader self-identified Black diaspora. This kind of enquiry entails the double movement of revisiting the concept and its development since the 1950s, and picking up where the early scholars left off to explore past and present articulations, conceptualizations, and theories of the African diaspora, internal and external to the continent in order to assess/examine the impact of these communities on the history of and contemporary situations in Africa and beyond.

Concurrently with the formation of African and Black communities exterior to the continent has been the emergence of different migrant communities within it, that is, internal diasporas composed of two main strains: foreign populations settling on the continent and Africans migrating within Africa. Africa has long attracted migrants and settlers: Arabs in the Saharan and Sahelian borders from the West Atlantic coast to the Indian Ocean; various Asian groups in the East African coast before and during colonial rule; Afro-Brazilians in the Bight of Benin; Malay slaves and convicts; Indians indentured laborers and traders; Chinese workers and traders in Southern Africa; Lebanese and Syrians traders in West and Central Africa; and European settlers, traders, and colonial administrators since the beginning with the Atlantic slave trade, and African Americans to Liberia between 1825-1893 from which another native/settler narrative and conflict would emerge. These formations compel us to rigorously interrogate the various and distinct zones of interaction across time and space, and the changing power relations between indigenous Africans and migrants that have created new sites of power, new and transformed tensions and antagonisms, wealth accumulation and on-going poverty, gender relations and diverse sexualities, and economies of knowledge framed by issues of race, ethnicity, religion, and community formation and membership, none of which are settled nor can be assumed as similarly meaningful transnationally. Compared to the intensity with which the debates regarding the African diaspora have been taken up, diasporas in Africa remain underexplored; it is still necessary to explore the different trajectories of each of the diasporic and migrant communities and consider the social, economic, political, health and environmental consequences of their settlement and/or continuous relocations, especially in the case of second generation migrants who create their own images and projects and use their initial or acquired identity to challenge directly or indirectly local notions of hierarchies and power. The issue of migration, which might also be captured within the concept of diaspora if we consider diaspora is one form of migration - has become an important and controversial question in the political, social, cultural arenas all over Western countries as well as in Africa. Migration is impacting communities, policymakers, development practitioners as well as activists and non-governmental organizations since the beginning of the 1980s. On the receiving side in the in-migration countries, access to resources, cultural, social and religious differences have fueled anti-migrant sentiment providing the foundations for large and powerful anti-immigrant coalitions and deadly xenophobic manifestations and hate crimes. Political parties, grassroots organizations, governments and international organizations have developed specific strategies and policies in the debate over migration, focusing on risk factors, security, push and pull factors, the need of national immigration policy framework, the creation of new transnational economic spaces, migration potential for development from remittances, skills and knowledge transfers. The internal migration in Africa that has intensified in the last twenty years has had a profound impact at national and regional levels. From the 1980s onward, conflicts, economic hardships, and political repression have led to the massive displacement of different groups, and the creation of refugee transit or quasi-permanent camps. However, migrants are not only originating from conflict-ridden regions and are not all refugees. They also include people moving for a variety of reasons that involve varying degrees of coercion and opportunity, or at least the hope of opportunity. Concepts such as refugee diasporas and economic diasporas are currently being used by scholars, humanitarian and human rights activists, and policy makers to account for the formation and consolidation of those communities, and to address their role as active agents in the perpetuation and resolution of conflicts, peace building, and economic recovery; and, in the case of the African Unity organization, in promoting regional economic integration. Internal migration is continuing to have a disruptive effect on the social, political and economic life of different African countries, and we are seeing a dramatic impact on

relations between migrant and pre-existing communities around issues of access to agriculture and pastoral land, urban wealth accumulation and investment processes, and to political power, thereby creating other native/settler antagonisms and conflicts. Specific grievances have been generated by these new conditionsfrom the local to the national and regional levelsconcerning the reconfiguration of notions of citizenship and belonging. Migration flows have also influenced local, national and regional ecologies and have led to increasing competition among different groups to access symbolic and material resources. These developments require additional research, especially in relation to policy making. This years theme is about how African diasporic communities, however broadly or narrowly defined, are, for a variety of reasons, repeatedly reproduced and/or engaged with multiple challenges within specific geographical, historical, social, political, and economic situations to reinvent and reframe Africa in relation to their own needs, challenges, and interests as well as demands and expectations from home and/or community, indeed from homeland to simply home. It is also about how African and non-African groups and communities settling in different regions of Africa are negotiating their presence and reacting to issues of development, residence, rights, access to resources (including cultural), and citizenship.

2010 ANNUAL MEETING SUBMISSION CATEGORIES Categories Specific to this years Theme: African Diaspora and Diasporas in Africa 1. Theoretical Approaches to Diasporas and Migration studies 2. Old Diasporas/New postcolonial diasporas 3. Diasporas and Conflict & Accord/Peace-building 4. Diaspora, Xenophobia and Racialization 5. Diasporas and Religions 6. Diasporas and Development 7. Diasporas, Identity and Belonging 8. Diasporas and Public Health 9. Virtual and Digital Diasporas 10. Comparative Diasporas 11. Gender, Sexuality, Family and Diasporas 12. The Politics of Diaspora Communities 13. Art and Literature of Diasporas General Categories: New Directions 1. Cultures (arts, music, performance, literature, language, and folklore) 2. Education 3. Environment 4. Health and Population 5. Human Rights 6. Gender, Family and Sexuality 7. Politics and Policy 8. Religions 9. History 10. Other