In Western mainstream media Africa is often represented as “underdeveloped” and “the poorest” continent. This stereotypical view posits Africa and Africans at the margins of the various discourses in the globalizing world, useful only for measuring global war and poverty indices. In order to offer alternative visions to this view, and empowering “voices of partnership” coming from Africa, the Azania Speaks International Conference was held in November 2008 at the University of Udine, Italy. Following the successful hosting of the conference, we are in the process of producing a scholarly book based on the conference proceedings, and additional contributions from scholars in the field of Oral Literature, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, Postcolonial Literatures, African Studies, Popular Culture, Media Studies, Globalization and Diaspora Studies. The book is scheduled for publication (Forum, Udine, Italy) in December 2009. It aims at a wide-ranging public of scholars dealing with the areas listed above and is intended to become a seminal text in the field, which will also address both undergraduate and post-graduate students. The volume will include a DVD recording of the creative performances of guest artists as well as the most significant moments of the conference.
The multiple voices of the participants at the conference highlighted the rhythmic structure of the spoken word as a metaphor for healing and renewing the human psyche, in which transformative cultures flow through the musical waves of oral poetry and multimedia formats, evoking Walter Ong’s concept of “tertiary orality”. The scholars, performance poets, and the audience found mutual inspiration in an inner architecture where the spoken word embodies once again the restorative Great Cosmic Dance. In the words of Kenyan poet Shailja Patel the “conference acknowledged art as knowledge, as scholarship, in its own right as opposed to the false dichotomy of some traditional academic studies, which separate the making of creative work from ‘arts scholarship, i.e. writing and thinking about creative work’”.

This call concerns the following areas:

1. Poetics:
Poets, storytellers and performers who participated at the conference, or those who may be interested, are invited to send an original piece of creative writing (poetry, prose, drama, etc.) of their own choice, provided it is in tune with the spirit of the conference.
Poetics contributors please send only the final version of their piece: max 8000 characters, together with: your mailing address; e-mail address; telephone and fax number(s); a biodata of not more than 100 words highlighting your artistic endeavours.

Those who cannot or do not wish to participate with an original piece are kindly invited to send:
• copyright form to publish their performance in DVD format,
• references to published texts included (or referred to) in the performance (to quote in content index and in DVD).

2. Academic contributions: Scholars are invited to submit an abstract/proposal of no more than 300 words, for consideration for the book entitled Azania Speaks: Spoken Word and Visions of Partnership in Postcolonial Africa. The abstracts should indicate the following: title of paper; full name of author; affiliation; mailing address; e-mail address; telephone and fax number(s); a biodata of not more than 100 words highlighting one or two major publication(s) where applicable.

Contributors may be guided by (but not limited to) the following sub-themes:

 The power of oral poetry and storytelling
 Female voices in contemporary African oral/spoken word poetry
 Interfaces between contemporary African popular cultural production and traditional African oral traditions.
 Partnership models and viable educational strategies for teaching/learning verbal art as performance.
 Performance Studies
 Literature(s) in English(es) that express a strong desire to recover and re-shape – in postcolonial aesthetic terms – a sacred pre-colonial mythological past, a past in which the figure of a feminine divinity or Mother Africa stands at the core of a narrative r-evolution.
 Youth culture and multiple voices: globalization, digital age and emergent genres of oral performance in Africa and African Diasporas.

Deadlines:
Submission for Poetics: May 15, 2009
Submission for Abstract/Proposal of academic contributions: May 15, 2009
Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2009
Deadline for revised chapters: Sept. 30, 2009

Authors whose abstracts/proposals are accepted will be required to follow the ALL book series FORUM EDITRICE UDINE - ITALY notes for contributors and style-sheet form.
Please kindly send your contribution to the Editors of the volume:

Antonella Riem Natale
Professor of English Literature
Dean – Faculty of Modern Languages
Udine University
Via Mantica 3
33100 Udine, Italy
antonella.riem@uniud.it

Nduka Otiono
Department of English and Film Studies
3-5 Humanities Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5
Canada.
otiono@ualberta.ca

About ALL book series FORUM EDITRICE UDINE - ITALY This book series crosses disciplinary boundaries in literary criticism, linguistics (theoretical and applied) and creative writing, explores complex and fast-changing cultural landscapes mapping out new paths in ‘different’ territories by means of experimental, multidisciplinary, poetic and artistic studies where cultures of partnership can be developed. ALL, the acronym of Associazione Laureati/e in Lingue (Association of Graduates in Modern Languages) means everything and everybody: this is our starting point in an open journey of discovery.
Editorial and scientific board: Maria Bortoluzzi (editorial secretary, Udine University), Paolo Bartoloni (Sydney University), Veronica Brady (University of Western Australia), Saumitra Chakravarty (Bangalore University), Riane Eisler (Centre for Partnership Studies, U.S.A.), Armando Gnisci (Rome 1 University), Nduka Otiono (University of Alberta, Canada), Tom Petsinis (Victoria University).