1 March 2010 - 8 May 2010
The Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham invites applications to contribute to the 2010 Cadbury Fellows’ Workshop, which will focus on popular culture in contemporary urban Africa.
Three visiting fellows from Africa will be appointed to participate in a ten-week schedule of seminars, discussion groups, and other activities. The workshop will culminate in an international conference, 6-8 May 2010 jointly organised with Institute of Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA), University of Leuven, within the framework of AEGIS.
One aim of the Fellowship scheme is to assist new scholars to develop a research paper and bring it to publication, and the conference papers will form the basis of a special issue of Africa, the journal of the International African Institute.
The deadline for Fellowship applications has now passed, thank you for your interest.
More information will be published shortly
We will explore the material and symbolic dimensions of urban forms of popular culture. Our central questions for the workshop are:
●How do music and broadcasting media in their material, embodied and symbolic forms participate in the constitution of African urban experience?
●How do urban public spaces and infrastructure in Africa generate specific kinds of practices, discourses and expressions in urban popular culture?
We understand ‘popular culture’ as a zone of ambiguity, constituting a cacophony of sounds and images, and producing variegated narratives, icons and realities. We take 'urban' to be a shifting and relative term, which can include small towns as well as major cities. Against this background, the workshop will explore the following themes:
Space, infrastructure and zones of entertainment
Power and popular culture
What is the place of music and broadcasting in actions of resistance, propaganda and censorship programmes? And how do producers, brokers and audiences adapt to it?
How and when do politicians and religious leaders become celebrities?
Where are musicians and media producers (actors, hosts, journalists) positioned on the various axes of power and authority?
What kind of new social categories emerge in the margins of music and media? We can think of journalists, dubbers and translators, shop keepers, etc. Which social categories make a livelihood out of music and media production and events? And how can they achieve this?
Time and music/media
Do music and media genres structure the rhythms of city life?
What do songs and media productions reveal about memory, nostalgia and hope? How are past, present, and future imagined, expressed and brought about via popular culture?
How do genres, content and celebrities produce a rift between the generations? And, conversely, in what ways do young and old collectively engage with music and media?
Visceral aesthetics and the city
How does popular culture contribute to ‘the urban feel’ and the imagination of urbanism?
How ‘urban’ are the aesthetics of music and media that we find in African cities and towns? Do certain music and media productions produce an ‘African urban style’?
How do the visceral aesthetics of certain music and media genres tie in with larger, more encompassing symbolic worlds such as religion, politics, and/or the market?
What kind of embodied experiences do music and media producers and audiences yearn for, appreciate, or jettison?
More information:
