Dear colleagues,
With the African Studies Association's 61st Annual Meeting in Atlanta around the corner (Nov. 29-Dec. 1), I am writing on behalf of the Lusophone African Studies Organization with some announcements and conference information.
1) LASO Business Meeting and Reception
This year’s business meeting and reception will take place on Friday, November 30 at 7:30 pm in International Hall A at the conference hotel. We invite you all to bring samples of your recent work—publications, educational materials, etc.—and business cards to share at the reception. Please note that it is now possible to pay LASO membership dues online (https://africanstudies.org/about-the-asa/coordinate-affiliate-organizations/coordinate-organization-forms/laso-membership-form/ ).
A couple of additional items to keep in mind: Since the LASO Secretary will not be at the conference, we will be looking for a volunteer note-taker for the meeting this year. We are also seeking individuals who might be interested in serving as LASO Treasurer or Secretary for the next 2-year term. If you are a junior faculty member, LASO offers a rewarding and low-stress opportunity for service to the profession. If you are interested in serving in any of these capacities, please email me at heidi.gengenbach@umb.edu before the LASO Business Meeting.
2) LASO 2018 Paper Prize
On behalf of Arianna Huhn (LASO Paper Prize Coordinator) and other members of the LASO Executive Committee, I would like to thank all of those individuals who submitted their excellent papers for this year’s competition, as well as the judges who donated their time to read and assess the submissions. Choosing a single award recipient from the high-quality papers we receive gets more difficult every year, and we are very grateful for everyone’s support.
I am pleased to announce that David Glovsky, a graduate student and Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellow at Michigan State University, has been selected for this year’s LASO Paper Prize. Glovsky’s paper, “Busting the Border: Escaping Violence in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau Using Colonial Migratory Networks, 1960-1978,” is a well written and strongly researched paper based on the author’s near complete dissertation. The paper provides an interesting and insightful contribution to West African historiography by presenting the lives of migrant people living and striving across barriers established by national projects at different moments in the histories of Portuguese Guinea/Guinea-Bissau and Guinea Conakry. Expanding beyond the borders of a single country to focus on ethnic identity within, beyond, and across Guinea-Bissau, the paper won praise from LASO judges for “solidly contribut[ing] to the field of Lusophone African studies by calling into question the possibilities and limits of using ‘Lusophone’ as an area of study, [and] focusing instead on centering situated knowledges that emerge from the region itself.” Glovsky will be receive the award at the LASO Business Meeting, after presenting his paper at 4:00 pm that day (Nov. 30) on the panel “Bringing African Borderlands into Wider Conversations” (Session VIII-L-1).
3) LASO's sponsored panel and roundtable sessions
II-I-3 Pluralism: Democratization and electoral integrity in Africa (11/29/2018 - 10:30 AM)
Chair: Abel Amado, Simmons College
Democratization and Electoral Integrity: The Angolan Case, Nuno Vidal, University Institute of Lisbon (IUL) - CIES-IUL, ISCTE (Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology)
Trust, Confidence and New Ways of Protest in Electoral Integrity in Angola, Ermelinda Liberato, International Institute of Social History
How does the inclusion of post-rebel parties shape democratic politics? Parties, elections and peace in Mozambique, 1992-2018, Carrie Manning, Georgia State University
V-L-1 Author Meets Critic: Kicking Empire: Football in Colonial Africa (11/30/2018 - 8:30 AM)
Chair: Lilly Havstad, Boston University
Todd Cleveland, University of Arkansas (author, Following the Ball: The Migration of African Soccer Players across the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1949–1975, Ohio UP 2017)
Nuno Domingos, University of Lisbon (author, Football and Colonialism: Body and Popular Culture in Urban Mozambique, Ohio UP 2017)
Susann Baller, German Historical Institute Paris-Dakar
Peter Alegi, Michigan State University
Eleusio Filipe, Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM)
4) Other papers/sessions related to Lusophone Africa
With apologies to anyone whose paper we might have missed, here is a list of the Lusophone Africa-related papers and sessions in the 2018 conference program. It is exciting to see the number and geographic/disciplinary diversity of presentations on Lusophone countries increasing every year!
I-S-2 Photographs at the edge of national narrative (11/29/2018 - 8:30AM)
Stopping for the Camera: Photographic Ritual and the 1902 Portuguese Expedition to Barue, Mozambique, Rui Assubuji, University of the Western Cape
III-G-2 For Whom, For What?: Debating Development Narratives in Postcolonial Africa (11/29/2018 - 2:00PM)
The Narrative of Nonracial Development in the Portuguese Empire, 1960-1965, Zachary Kagan-Guthrie, University of Mississippi
II-H-2 Transnational Migration and Affective Ties (11/29/2018 - 10:30AM)
Family and Kinship in Contemporary Mobile World: The Angola, Cape Verde, and Portugal Case, Marzia Grassi, University of Lisbon - Institute of Social Science
II-I-2 Civil Military Relations in Postwar Settings (11/29/2018 - 10:30AM)
Leadership, Political Choices, and Rebel Group Behavior in the Angolan Civil Wars, Kai M. Thaler, Harvard University
II-I-3 Pluralism: Democratization and electoral integrity in Africa (11/29/2018 - 10:30 AM)
Chair: Abel Djassi Amado, Simmons College
Democratization and Electoral Integrity: The Angolan Case, Nuno Vidal, University Institute of Lisbon
Trust, Confidence and New Ways of Protest in Electoral Integrity in Angola, Ermelinda Liberato, International Institute of Social History
How does the inclusion of post-rebel parties shape democratic politics? Parties,elections and peace in
Mozambique, 1992-2018, Carrie Manning, Georgia State University
V-T-4 Sex(uality), Power, and Gender in a Global Angola (11/30/2018 - 8:30AM)
Chair: Jessica Krug, George Washington University
Trans-Njinga: Masculinities, Personhood and Fugitive and State Being in Angola and Beyond, Jessica Krug, George Washington University
Queen Njinga in Europe: The African Warrior and the Over-Sexualized Woman, Linda Heywood, Boston University
Sexuality, Wealth, and Power in Benguela in the Nineteenth Century, Mariana Candido, University of Notre Dame
VII-B-1 Land access and property rights in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Part 1 of 2 (11/30/2018 - 2:00PM)
Chairs: Mariana Candido, University of Notre Dame and António Tomas, University of Cape Town (UCT)
Urban Property Rights in Colonial Mozambique: The Case of Mozambique Island (1763-1800), Maria Bastião, Leiden University
Land Access and Use from Colonial to Postcolonial Times in Southern Mozambique, 1950s-2010s: The
Pursuit of Rural Development?, Eleusio Filipe, Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM)
The Conundrum of Collective Property in Urban Luanda, António Tomas, University of Cape Town (UCT)
Cassava Capitalism? Gendered Land, Space, and States in Rural Angola's Pasts and Futures, Aharon de Grassi, Independent Scholar
VII-L-5 New Approaches to Demography, Resettlement, and Mobility in Africa: A Panel in Honor of
Kristin Mann (11/30/2018 - 2:00 PM)
The Early Population Charts of Portuguese Angola, 1797-1830: Estimates of Size and Regional
Distribution, Daniel Domingues da Silva, Rice University
VIII-L-4 Land access and property rights in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Part 2 of 2 (11/30/2018 - 4:00PM)
Chairs: Mariana Candido, University of Notre Dame and António Tomas, University of Cape Town (UCT)
No War, My Property and My Testament: Power Struggle between Gaspar Álvares and João Correia De
Sousa, the Governor of Angola 17th Century, Jose Lingna Nafafé, University of Bristol
Understanding Freed African Landand Property Ownership in Nineteenth-Century Salvador Da Bahia, Asligul Berktay, New York University (NYU) - New York University (NYU), Shanghai
Property and Possession Across the Atlantic: Legal Procedures in Nineteenth-Century Brazil and Angola,
Mariana Dias Paes, Max Planck Institute for European Legal History
Land Use in and Around Benguela Before the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Agriculture and Medicinal Plants
Production, Esteban Salas, University of Notre Dame
XII-T-4 Women's Livelihoods and Survival Strategies (12/01/2018 - 4:00 PM)
The Real Financial System in Benguela (Angola) - the Case of Kixikila Women, Ana Maria Duarte, Instituto Superior Politécnico Lusíada de Benguela -
VII-F-1 Caution, "high voltage": Dynamic fields of conflict intervention in Africa (11/30/2018 - 2:00PM)
Constructing and Ordering Regional Space(S): ECOWAS and AU Practices of Conflict Intervention in
Guinea-Bissau and Beyond, Jens Herpolsheimer, University of Leipzig
VIII-L-1 Bringing African Borderlands into Wider Conversations (11/30/2018 - 4:00 PM)
Busting the Border: Escaping Violence in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau Using Colonial Migatory Networks,
1960-1978, David Newman Glovsky, Michigan State University
XI-T-2 Patience, suffering, and power in three West African countries (12/01/2018 - 2:00PM)
Tying the Knot: Work, Marriage, and Suffering in Rural Guinea-Bissau, Joanna Davidson, Boston University
II-M-1 Governing Infrastructures (11/29/2018 - 10:30 AM)
On Renovation in Beira (Mozambique), Pamila Gupta, University of the Witwatersrand
VII-I-2 What Makes a Democracy? (11/30/2018 - 2:00PM)
Political Development in Bolivia, Zambia, and Mozambique after 1989, evidence from fieldwork, Brian Norris, The Citadel
VIII-A-1 Shadow States: Rethinking State-Society Relations (11/30/2018 - 4:00 PM)
The Renewal of Armed Conflict in Mozambique: Lack of National Reconciliation or Discovery of Natural
Resources?, Natália Bueno, Universidade de Coimbra
VIII-B-2 Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective (11/30/2018 - 4:00PM)
Neoliberal 'Restructuring' and the Effects on Eco-Social Communities in Mozambique, 1982-1994, Golaleh Pashmforoosh, York University
XI-E-2 The New Politics of Land Registrationand Titlingin African Countries (12/01/2018 - 2:00PM)
Implementation of a Land Law and Political Dynamics in Mozambique, Akiyo Aminaka, Japan External Trade Organization
XI-G-1Rural Development Contested (12/01/2018 - 2:00PM)
“Crippled” by Cassava?: Changes in Rural Women's Work and Household Nutrition in a Mozambique Value Chain Scheme, Heidi Gengenbach, University of Massachusetts Boston
XI-H-1 Expulsions and the Materiality of Place-Making, Part 1 (12/01/2018 - 2:00 PM)
Cities of the Future: The Aftermath of Reeducation Camps and the Materiality of Unfulfilled Promises in
Northern Mozambique, Benedito Machava, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
XI-L-3 Coersion and Slavery in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Africa (12/01/2018 - 2:00PM)
Slaves, Workers and Freed in Nineteenth Century Querimbas Islands (Mozambique). Some Reflections,
Francesca Declich, University of Urbino
IV-F-2 African Modern (11/29/2018-4:00PM)
Wild and Messy: Decolonisation and Closing Down the Lusophone City, Jonathan Cane, University of the Witwatersrand
Country # of papers
Angola 14
Cabo Verde 1
Guinea-Bissau 3
Mozambique 12
São Tomé & Principe -
I wish you all safe travels to Atlanta and look forward to seeing many of you soon!
Warm regards,
Heidi Gengenbach
Chair, LASO
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