The African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) is inviting panel proposals for their 4th Biennial Conference on the theme of “Africa and the Human: Old questions, new imaginaries.”

The conference will be held for the first time in South Africa (at the University of Cape Town, hosted by HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa) from 11-16 April 2022 as both an in-person and virtual event. The CHR is pleased to share that it will be participating in the conference and co-hosting two public lectures and performances for the ASAA 2022.

About ASAA 2022: What does it mean to be human today in Africa, African in the world today, and what can Africa contribute to thinking the human? The idea of the human is increasingly threatened by destabilising transformations as the world gradually moves to what is defined by some as the abyss of modernity and the aftershocks of the postmodern. Will prevalent ideas of being human and/or being African survive? Should the idea of the human and African be saved, and as we move into the Anthropocene/posthuman, what or who will or should count as human and/or African in the end? As the old certainties of the enlightenment are questioned and rejected and the promises of neoliberal democracy shattered – labelled as both fraudulent and farcical – what alternatives remain to imagine the human from Africa?

The closing date for submission of panels and pre-conference workshop proposals is 30 June 2021