CFP: "Gender, Slavery, and the City in African History: Celebrating Kristin Mann," The 4th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference. Lagos, Nigeria. June 27-29, 2019

Halimat Somotan Discussion

Call for Panelists

“Gender, Slavery, and the City in African History: Celebrating Kristin Mann."

The 4th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference. Lagos, Nigeria. June 27-29, 2019

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The Lagos Studies Association (LSA) is glad to organize panel/s in honor of Kristin Mann, who after 40 years of an impressive career as a teacher, scholar, mentor, and university administrator, recently retired from Emory University. Mann committed invaluable energy, time, and resources in training multiple generations of Africanist scholars while keeping the African experience at the center of rigorous scholarship and teaching. She has been a strong supporter of the LSA since its inception. Not only did she give the inaugural keynote lecture of the association’s conference in 2016 and enrolled as its first life member, but she also donated 88 titles (90 volumes) of highly useful books to the University of Lagos library in 2017 in a bid to increase access to academic materials. Her impressive career saw the publication of many works, including Marrying Well (1985)a pioneering book that ruptures the conception of marriage and social mobility among educated women in colonial Lagos, at a time when gender studies was struggling to find its deserved place in Africanist scholarship. Through this book and her “Slavery and the Birth of an African City” (2007), Mann positions ideas and narratives in ways that give agency to a wide range of historical actors and processes.

We welcome participation that uses Mann’s primary research interests (gender, marriage, slavery, the city) as a touchstone to thought-provoking narratives, uncharted theoretical perspectives, and methodological pluralism. We conceive this panel as an opportunity to reflect on the state of scholarship and the contributions of Mann in these fields, disturb disciplinary boundaries, and ask time-sensitive questions about knowledge. What should be the new path in African women, gender, sexuality, slavery, and urban studies? How should scholars approach these fields in the light of new and critical debates over the location and the politics of production of knowledge in and outside Africa?

If you are interested in joining this panel, send a 250-word abstract to

(lagosstudiesassociation@gmail.com) on or before March 15, 2019.

Visit the LSA website for additional information about the conference: https://lagosstudies.wcu.edu/