[Update] ASA 2023 CFP New perspectives on Africa and the Second World War

Notice: Given that ASA extended the overall submission and registration deadline to 14 April 2023, the call for panelists to join this three-part panel series on Africa and the Second World War has also been extended to 09 April 2023. 

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Research on Africa and the Second World War has expanded considerably in recent decades. This scholarship has enhanced our understanding of the multiple ways and levels on which African contributions shaped the war, how the war affected individuals and communities across the African continent, and how it transformed Africa’s political, economic, and socio-cultural landscapes both during and after the conflict. Despite this recent wave of scholarship, many aspects of Africa and the Second World War remain understudied, some even unstudied. 

This three-part panel series brings together scholars examining diverse and new perspectives of Africans’ experiences of and their individual and collective contributions to the Second World War. Spanning Western, Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa, the papers on this panel series provide extensive geographical coverage of the world war’s effect on Africa and Africans. They also explore a variety of subjects, including empire, identity, humanitarianism, labor, medical and military recruitment, leisure and media, memory, race and ethnicity, resource extraction and distribution, and wartime military service. Traversing common historiographical terrain in new ways or with new voices, some papers complicate contemporary narratives and understandings of the conflict. Others introduce actors and events not yet in the historical canon. Together, the papers featured on this multi-part panel provide not only new perspectives but also new lines of inquiry into Africa and the Second World War more broadly.

Interested participants should send their paper proposals to either Leslie Sabakinu at sabakinu@wisc.edu or Kathleen Alfin at kalfin@wisc.edu no later than 09 April 2023.