Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events

Race for Education: Gender, White Tone and Schooling in South Africa
​Professor Mark Hunter

Professor Mark Hunter of the department of Geography & Planning,  University of Toronto will be discussing his new book – “Race for Education: Gender, White Tone and Schooling in South Africa”

Following the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC government placed education at the centre of its plans to build a nonracial and more equitable society. Yet, by the 2010s a wave of student protests voiced demands for decolonised and affordable education. By following families and schools in Durban for nearly a decade, Mark Hunter sheds new light on South Africa’s political transition and the global phenomenon of education marketisation. He rejects simple descriptions of the country’s move from ‘race to class apartheid’ and reveals how ‘white’ phenotypic traits like skin colour retain value in the schooling system even as the multiracial middle class embraces prestigious linguistic and embodied practices the book calls ‘white tone’. By illuminating the actions and choices of both white and black parents, Hunter provides a unique view on race, class and gender in a country emerging from a notorious system of institutionalised racism.

Date: Wednesday October 16, 2019 | 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Venue: Room 482 (Discovery Centre) MacOdrum Library, Carleton University

This is part of the African Studies Brownbag Seminar Series

Call for Fellowship Applications | Pilot African Postgraduate Academy (PAPA)

“Point Sud, Muscler le savoir local”, a Bamako based Institute for Advanced Studies, invites applications for a three year fellowship from early career scholars based at African universities. Successful applicants will be part of a cohort of 15 early career scholars in the Pilot African Postgraduate Academy (PAPA). PAPA is a Three-year post-doctoral training programme, held mostly in French, and generously funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Mamadou Diawara (University of Frankfurt, Germany) and Prof. Elísio Macamo (University of Basel, Switzerland). The courses in Bamako will take place every year in the first two weeks of March and September, starting in March 2020 and ending in September 2022.

Fellows will receive a monthly grant of 300 € on top of travel funds allowing them to attend the courses in Bamako. Meals and hotel expenses are covered in Bamako. A lump sum fund of 10.000 € is foreseen to organize workshops at the home institution, invite researchers and collaboration partners, to attend conferences (in their home countries and abroad), conduct research and work on their publications.

Application Deadline is October 31, 2019. 
Contact:  Dr. Stefan Schmid, ZIAF, s.schmid@em.uni-frankfurt.de

See more information and how to apply here.

Call for Papers | Screening Ecosystems: Activism & Documentary Practices in Africa
McMaster University, March 19-21, 2020

The African Documentary Film Collective, a research group funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, is organising its third workshop-conference on “Screening Ecosystems:  Activism and Documentary Practices in Africa” at McMaster University, March 19-21, 2020. As we have examined in our first two previous workshops, African filmmakers have turned their attention to the documentary genre to critically examine the historical and lived experiences, thereby identifying political and ecological imperatives on the continent. Subsequently, that led us to examine the representations of Africa, the increasing participation of African women directors whose ethics and new aesthetics have made the general public aware of new forms of political, social and environmental activism as well as their passion for cinema.

The Conference will interrogate the complexities of documentary production, collaboration, experimentation, activism and aesthetics by African filmmakers. Possible topics of investigation for this workshop include the following:

• Screening ecosystems:  legacies and new trends
• Ecological imaginaries and critiques of industrial modernity
• Environmental justice and/or politics and African documentary cinema
• Ecocriticism and/in African documentary cinema
• Women documentary filmmakers and the aesthetics of everyday life
• Advocating for the environment:  local/global/glocal spectatorships
• Intersections and/or connections in African documentary filmmaking:  seascapes/landscapes; humans/non-humans
• African documentary practice: conventions, reinvention, possibilities?
• African documentaries:  protecting ecosystems and promoting human rights
• Screening environmental justice

December 15: Submission of Abstract (250 – 300 words)
January 15: Notification of accepted proposals to authors
February 28: Submission of paper for adjudication and inclusion in the Conference Proceedings
March 19-21: Conference at McMaster
June 30: Submission of final version of paper – 5000 words
All emails to scrosta@mcmaster.ca (African Documentary Film Collective)

Save the Date for CAAS 2020 Conference
June 3-5, 2020
Western University in London Ontario, Canada

The official call for papers and panels will be circulated shortly. This year’s conference will relate to the Congress theme of “Bridging Divides”.
In the meantime, you can visit our website on https://caas-acea.org/