December 7-9, 2006

Purdue University - West Lafayette, Indiana

The African Studies and Research Center invites papers and panels for the 22nd Annual Conference on African American Culture and Philosophy. The 2006 theme is: “Blacker than Thou: Authenticity and Identity in the Diaspora.

Papers and panels are invited on, but not limited to, the following three broad areas:

Configuring Blackness in specific geographic regions – especially explorations on:
• Race in the “presence of absence” – invisibility, muted and/or silenced voices
• Hyphenated blackness, as well as the adjective factor of nationality
• Cross currents and tensions of being black and other

Identify formation, including:
• Implications of identity formation in children, including multi-racial adoptions
• Cultural impact of “identifying black”
• Structural plurality of identity formation and conflict

Credentializing and centering blackness; interrogating blackness:

• What is or isn’t black – situational contextualization
• Authentic representation of blackness in popular culture
• Untangling the complexities of blackness

Integral to the above categories are interrogations of class dynamics and Diasporic identities.

Abstracts will be accepted for individual presentation and panels. Abstracts should be 250 words or less and submitted by Friday, May 1st, 2006 Decisions about submissions will be made June 2, 2006

SEND TO:
Dr. Carolyn E. Johnson, Senior Research Associate African American Studies and Research Center
1367 Beering Hall
100 North University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1367 765-494-5680 or 765-496-1581 (Fax) Electronic Mail to:
aasrc@cla.purdue.edu If sending by electronic mail – please use “Symposium Abstract” as the subject line

For additional information about the Center visit our website a http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/idis/african-american/