Call for Abstracts:

We are interested in putting together a panel for the 2005 ASA (Washington D.C.) annual meeting, called "Collaborative Hegemony: Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa." We would be very interested in proposals from a wide range of perspectives, addressing the intersection between missions, evangelism, and colonial expansion across Africa. The dialogues between European missionaries and the native peoples of Africa on the one hand and between missionaries and imperial officials on the other, provide a historical anthropology of two cultures attempting to understand, contend with, and accommodate each other in a context in which African cultures were confronted by an externally imposed/dominant culture. This panel seeks to address several questions including: missionary reports and dialogues as colonizing texts in which missionaries used language, imagery, and European epistemology to legitimize relations of inequality with Africans; the strategic alliances with European trading and colonizing powers as a means of controlling the African population; and the ways in which both groups collaborated to colonize African societies. We seek papers that transcend the narrow boundaries that often separate the role of these two elements of European encounter to present the reality that missionary endeavors and official colonial actions could all be conceptualized as a hegemonic encounter in which both pursued the same goal, at least at the ideological level even if adopted different strategies.

If you are interested in being part of this panel, please send an abstract of about 400-500 words to the e-mail address provided below, and/or to Korieh@rowan.edu We would appreciate to have your proposals by Friday March 11, in order to allow us time to put this dynamic and promising panel together.

Please remember to appropriately register for the conference in accordance with the instructions provided on the ASA website together with your paper submission. The deadline for ASA Call for Papers and Submission is March 15. Submission without the stipulated fees will not be processed.