(Sponsored by the African Literature Association)
Concepts of the world are commonplace in current academic discourse about Africa, whether it be in ongoing discussions of “world literature,” identifications of autonomous “African worlds,” or discussions of world-building and world-making by African creative practitioners. This panel will consider which versions of “the world” have historically been, and are currently, at stake in African studies. We invite papers that interrogate the valences of “world” in African literary and cultural production, African philosophy, and African scholarly practices in diverse national and linguistic contexts.
Potential topics may include:
– Investigations into how “the world” has functioned as a concept in writing from and about Africa.
– The roles played by concepts of the world in anticolonial and decolonial projects.
– The legacy of debates about “world literature” for African literary studies.
– Indigenous concepts of the world and their redeployments in contemporary cultural and political contexts.
– Instances of world-building and/or world-making in African cultural practices past and present.
– The extent to which prognostications of the “end of the world” in continental philosophy are relevant to African critical discourses about the world.
Please send an abstract of 250-300 words (max.) and a short bio to Alexander Fyfe (alexander.fyfe@uga.edu) by March 5, 2026.
Africa and the World: Concepts, Uses, Histories
