Announcement

CALL FOR PAPERS—RAL Special Issue on “Re-Reading the Popular in Africa,” Guest Editors: Onookome Okome and Stephanie Newell

This special issue of RAL is conceived to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Karin Barber’s seminal article, “Popular Arts in Africa,” which appeared in the African Studies Review in 1987 (30. 3: 1–78). For this issue of RAL, we invite contributors to re-read and reflect on Barber’s essay in the light of subsequent scholarship (including Barber’s own) and recent innovations in the field of African popular art forms and indeed the study of Africa in general. The idea is to think around and beyond what Barber’s seminal essay meant and still means to African studies twenty-five years after its publication. To think beyond means to locate the very core of the argument that Barber’s essay makes in the larger context of the study of popular arts and other forms of expression in Africa that may pass as creative engagements with the everyday. While this particular essay is at the heart of our project, we also recognize its complementary relationship with her other essays such as “Preliminary Notes on Audiences of Africa” (Africa 67.2 [1997]: 347–61), “Popular Reaction to Petro-Naira,” (Journal of Modern African Studies 20.3 [1982]: 431–45), and “Radical Conservatism in Yoruba Popular Plays” (Bayreuth African Studies Series 7 [1986]: 5–12) in the study of African popular arts. We encourage a critical assessment with this broad reading of Barber’s contribution to the field as well. Contributors may wish to engage with the following topics and themes:

• • New technologies and popular culture, including blogging and internet art forms;

• • The everyday and the formation of contemporary episteme in the African city in popular art;

• • Ways, means, and methods of transformation, transfigurations, and transmutation of street-rumors into popular media;

• • Disciplines and theorizations: the ways in which disciplinary frameworks generate diverse perspectives on, and approaches towards, African popular cultures;

• • The people: how this category is identified and interpellated by African culture-producers, politicians, religious leaders, and by “the people” themselves—including the vocabulary used (e.g., the “masses,” the “grassroots,” notions of a shared culture, etc);

• • The “popular”: the extent to which there is a “popular” that transcends national boundaries;

• • Form, structure, and the historicity of genres;

• • Archive and ephemera: debates about the archive in relation to popular and “ephemeral” art forms;

• • Urban and youth cultures, and popular art forms;

• • Popular and elite: the ways that popular and official/elite repertoires interpenetrate, the ways individuals access culture at different levels, and the ways electronic media blur the popular/elite distinctions that might once have prevailed;

• • Popular sexualities: the treatment of gender and sexuality in African popular art forms, and debates about the content of particular genres;

• • Beyond texts: the role of audiences and consumers of African popular art forms.

Contributors’ collective engagement with Barber’s ground-breaking article will give coherence to the wide range of popular art forms covered by the volume. Papers are expected to conform to standard RAL guidelines (MLA style, not to exceed thirty-five pages double-spaced, inclusive of notes). Please consult the style guidelines published in every issue of the journal. All submissions will be subject to normal peer review, and the editors encourage potential contributors to establish early contact with them. Deadline for submission of articles: 1 August 2011 (for publication in 2012). Guest editors: Onookome Okome (ookome@ualberta.ca) and Stephanie Newell (s.newell@sussex.ac.uk).