The new deadline for proposals has been extended to November 15, 2012.

An International conference is being organized to mark the 20th anniversary of the publication of Paul Gilroy’s seminal book, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993) which marked a pivotal shift in our understanding of the experience of transnational Black modernity. More than simply understanding Black experiences from around the Atlantic basin as being marginal to or derived from the culture of modernity, Gilroy argued that for a over century and a half, Black intellectuals have travelled and worked in a transnational framework that precludes anything but a superficial association with their country of origin. Expanding on DuBois' crucial notion of "double consciousness," Gilroy argued for a modernity broad enough in scope not simply including the marginal positions of slaves, but also positing the "ungenteel" aspects of slavery and terror as fundamentally crucial to understanding modernity itself. Since the publication of Gilroy’s influential book, there has been a lively and sustained effort to rethink the history of African Diaspora and indeed the history of modernity itself and the crucial role Africa and its descendants played in its constitution.

The Organizing Committee is pleased to announce an international conference, Remapping the Black Atlantic: Diaspora (Re)Writings of Race and Space to be held at DePaul University, April 12-14, 2013. This conference is designed to provide a critical space to remap the Black Atlantic beyond Gilroy’s original framework of the Black Atlantic anchored in the Anglophone Atlantic or the American branch of the African Diaspora in light of changing discourse regarding African and Black Diaspora Studies and related fields, taking into account history, contemporary contexts, location, movement, globalization, migration and the circulation of Black bodies and their experiences and what these things signify in a transnational framework. We seek papers from a broad array of disciplines and fields to invite critical engagement in exploring the multiplicity of ways in which the African and Black Diaspora is being remapped and rewritten.

Proposed papers should address one of the following thematic clusters around which the conference is organized:

Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity Migration and Entangled Networks Gendering and Queering Black Diaspora Identities Governmentality and Transnational Black Politics Popular Culture and Mass Media The Internet: On and Off the Grid -- Texting, Tweeting, Social Networks, the Archives and Access Performing and Translating Africa -- Music, Dance, Rituals, Language, and Style The Arts and Literature: Black Diaspora Subjectivities

Selected conference papers will be published in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal (Routledge)