The Center for Diopian Inquiry and Research on Education as Culture Transmission (DIRECT Center) at Medgar Evers College, of the City University of New York and The African World Studies Institute (AWSI) at Fort Valley State University, GA. are soliciting papers for the 4th annual Uncovering Connections: Cultural Endurance between Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean conference to be held March 14-15, 2003 at Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, NY.

Conceptually, papers should:

1. address and promote an understanding of African culture as inclusive of the culture of Africans on the continent and Africans throughout the world
2. foster scholarship that illustrates and investigates the mechanisms through which African culture has survived despite invasions, enslavement and colonization
3. encourage the exploration of the cultural continuities between Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.

We invite the submission of papers, including literature reviews that focus on:

• The intergenerational transmission of African culture (i.e. the role of parenting in the survival of African culture or documenting the knowledge and practices of elders in Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas)
• The retention of African culture and traditions (Africanisms) in the Caribbean and the Americas (i.e. spirituality, cultural norms, behaviors, patterns of speech, culinary arts, and aesthetic forms of expression whose roots are traceable to Africa)
• Instances of cultural unity and/or similarities among African people throughout the world
• The diverse mechanisms through which the transmission of African cultural knowledge has been disrupted (i.e. through colonization, enslavement, neo-colonialism, schooling etc)
• The various approaches African people throughout the world use or have used to maintain, retain or rediscover their cultural knowledge and identity.
• African culture as a source of understanding and action in the context of contemporary phenomena

Interested faculty members, independent researchers and graduate students should forward a one to two-page proposal by December 6, 2002. It should be sent by mail or email to the address below.

Notification of acceptance will be mailed by December 27, 2002.