The African Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh is pleased to announce its inaugural, regional one-day conference on Saturday, March 24, 2018. The Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes African Studies Conference creates a space for the sharing of ideas and broader intellectual engagement for Africanist faculty, researchers, and graduate students from across the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions. Seeing the need for opportunities for scholarly development and networking among educators and researchers in African Studies outside of the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, we invite Africanists from universities, community colleges, HBCUs, and other academic institutions in the neighboring states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, and New York to participate in the conference. The larger goal is to stimulate a regional intellectual community for Africanist scholars and researchers across a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds and institutions.
The keynote speaker for the conference will be Dr. Moses Ochonu, the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of History in the Department of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of three books (including Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria, which was a finalist for the 2015 Herskovits prize), numerous articles, and is a frequent public commentator on history and politics in Nigeria and the larger African continent. Co-sponsors for this conference also include the Department of Africana Studies, the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and the U.S. Department of Education.
The conference organizers have limited travel funds available to support conference participants who are more than three hours away from the University of Pittsburgh. If you are interested, please contact Yolanda Covington-Ward at ydc1@pitt.edu to request an application for travel funds.
Registration for the conference is free and breakfast and lunch will be provided. The deadline for conference abstracts is March 1, 2018. To present at the conference, please submit an abstract of 150 to 200 words through the online registration form. Participants will be notified of their acceptance within one week of the abstract deadline. A conference website with the full agenda will also be posted before the conference takes place.
You may register and view program information on the website of the University of Pittsburgh African Studies program: http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/africa/content/2018-african-studies-conference
Please direct any questions or concerns to Yolanda Covington-Ward at ydc1@pitt.edu.