Call for Papers/Panels:
Life Histories of African Slaves
(ASA 2013 & AEGIS 2013)
via The Harriet Tubman Institute:
Over the last five years, Alice Bellagamba, Carolyn Brown, Sandra Greene and Martin Klein have been involved in a project to find and publish African sources on the history of slavery and the slave trade within Africa. The most recent was a conference in Berlin that dealt with work and life cycle. We are in the process of publishing documents and papers that have emerged from these conferences. One of our central concerns has been to understand the lived experience of slaves in Africa and in the slave trade out of Africa. To that end, three of us would like to push further in one area, the quest for life histories of African slaves. Some recent work has been done in this area by Paul Lovejoy and various collaborators, by Michael Larue and by Eve Troutt Powell. Are there more life histories out there? We think so. If so, we would like to organize panels at the biannual meeting of Africa-Europe Group of Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS) in Lisbon 26-28 June 2013 and at the African Studies Association Meeting in Baltimore 21-24 November 2013. Our goal would be to eventually publish a book of such narratives. These life histories can be biographical or autobiographical.
Interested persons should submit titles and abstracts to martin.klein@utoronto.ca or alicebellagamba@yahoo.it or seg6@cornell.edu. Please indicate which conference you wish to participate in. We need proposals for the AEGIS meeting by October 10. The ASA programme deadline will be much later. We have no funds for travel.
Alice Bellagamba, Sandra Greene and Martin Klein
