Southeast Regional Seminar in African Studies
FINAL PROGRAM
Fifty Years of SERSAS: Foundations and Futures
March 3-4, 2023
The University of Virginia
Co-sponsors:
The African Studies Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Center for African Studies, University of Florida
Local hosts at the University of Virginia:
The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies
The John L. Nau, III History and Principles of Democracy Lab, Karsh Institute of Democracy
Lodging:
Holiday Inn Charlottesville-University Area
1901 Emmet Street, Charlottesville, VA 22901
Parking is available on-site at the hotel; please note that breakfast is not included, but guests can opt-in and pay individually for breakfast at Emmet’s Restaurant. Complimentary coffee is offered in the hotel lobby. There is also an indoor swimming pool. We will have breakfast at the conference venue on Saturday morning. There is not shuttle service from the hotel to the conference venue, but parking is free at Bond House for Saturday’s panel day.
FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 2023: Charlottesville Liberation and Freedom Day
SERSAS participants are encouraged to park in The Central Grounds Garage or The Corner Parking Lot on University Avenue for Friday events on UVA Grounds. The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, Small Special Collections, and Minor Hall are within very convenient walking distance from Central Grounds Garage and the Corner, as they are all located on Central Grounds. It takes approximately 5 minutes to walk between Small Special Collections and the Woodson Institute at Minor Hall. The walk from the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers to the Bond House (South Lawn) takes approximately 15 minutes. Please consult this UVA map for more information.
12pm: Liberation and Freedom Days Celebration
Descendants of Enslaved Communities and the UVA Memory Project
About Liberation and Freedom Days: At the time of the Civil War, over 53% of the residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County were enslaved. The celebration commemorates the March 3-6, 1865 arrival of Union cavalry in the area, when town and university officials surrendered at the current site of the UVA Chapel, and thousands of enslaved residents took the opportunity to escape and follow U.S. troops as they continued their advance toward Petersburg, Virginia.
Attendees are invited to arrive at 11:45 for a moment of silence at noon, followed by the UVA Chapel bells. The events at the Memorial include remarks, a poetry reading, and a performance by the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters.
2-3:30 pm: Touchstones of Democracy: Léopold Senghor and Senegalese Democracy 116/118 Bond House
Sarah Zimmerman, Professor of History, Western Washington University, in conversation with Emily Burrill, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia
Join historians Sarah Zimmerman and Emily Burrill in a discussion about Senegalese democracy and the enduring legacy of Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Touchstones is a series of the Nau Lab of the Karsh Institute. SERSAS participants are invited to attend this pre-conference event. Lunch provided. Please contact Emily Burrill esburrill@virginia.edu for more information and register here: https://democracyinitiative.virginia.edu/nau-labtouchstones-democracy-series
4pm: “Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style, and Racial Uplift”
Main Gallery, Harrison Institute and Small Special Collections Library
John Edwin Mason, Associate Professor of History and Co-Director, The Holsinger Studio Portrait Project
A special guided tour led by chief exhibition curator, John Mason. The Holsinger Studio Portrait Project showcases portraits that African Americans in Central Virginia commissioned from the Holsinger Studio during the first decades of the twentieth century. The portraits expressed the individuality of the women and men who commissioned them and silently yet powerfully asserted the Black community’s claims to rights and equality.
For more information about location and accessibility, please visit: https://small.library.virginia.edu/collections/featured/the-holsinger-studio-collection/
5-6:30 pm: Opening Reception and SERSAS Welcome
Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies, Minor Hall
Hosted by Robert Trent Vinson, Professor of African and African American Studies, Director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute
Join the SERSAS executive committee, the local arrangements committee, UVA-based colleagues, and SERSASians at a catered opening reception where we will gather in community before our day of conference panels. Robert Trent Vinson will provide welcoming remarks, a reflection on the first SERSAS gathering at the University of Virginia in 1973, and comments on future directions.
*SERSASians may choose to register for the day of panels at the opening reception. Please go to the registration table to pay your conference fee and receive your conference packet.
SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 2023
Karsh Institute of Democracy
Bond House, Brandon Avenue, University of Virginia
Free parking available in the B2 lot garage beneath the Bond House. The easiest way to enter Bond House for the conference is to exit the parking garage by foot after parking and walk up the sidewalk to enter through the main doors at the front of the building.
8:30-9AM: Registration and Breakfast (coffee, tea, water, continental breakfast bar)
9AM: Brief welcome and opening of the day of panels
9:15-10:45: SESSION ONE (concurrent panels)
Panel IA: Africa and Its Diaspora from the Beginnings: Steering or Straying from the Course? (116 Bond)
Chair: Benjamin Hart Fishkin, Tuskegee University
· Benjamin Hart Fishkin, Tuskegee University, “Memory: The Foundation of Africa and Its Best-Laid Plans”
· Yvette N. Essounga, Tuskegee University, “Africans, Their Collective Memories, and The Business Imperative for a Soiled Memory”
· John Fabrice Nyobe, Tuskegee University, “The Banker and Criminal Responsibility in The Financing of Companies in Difficulty”
· Godfrey Vincent, Tuskegee University, “Rebels at the Gates: The Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) in the era of George Weekes, 1962-1987”
· Bill F. Ndi, Tuskegee University, “The African Writer: Political, Historical, Social and Cultural Conscience”
Panel IB: The Politics of Gender in Historical Perspective (106 Bond House)
Chair: Sarah Zimmerman, Western Washington University
· Cathy Skidmore-Hess, Georgia Southern University, “Militarizing gender in seventeenth-century Central West Africa”
· Catherine Porter, Hampton University, “Gender ruptures and the female projection of the Congolese State, 1960-1965”
· Jeremy Rich, Marywood University, "We Never Had a Better Story: US Propaganda in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1964-1965"
· Stephen Magu, Norfolk State University, “A Vital Proposition: to promote gender equality and empower women (MDG #3)
10:45-11am: BREAK
11-12:30pm: SESSION TWO (concurrent panels)
Panel IIA: Control, Resistance, and Belonging in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts (116 Bond House)
Chair: John Edwin Mason, University of Virginia
· Dior Konaté, South Carolina State University, “The Machinery of Death: Capital Punishment in Colonial Senegal”
· James Blackwell, Winston Salem State University, “Stamping Canoes: Migration, Illicit Trade and Economic Resistance in the Rio del Rey, 1885-1920”
· Ashley Parcells, Independent Scholar, “We are regarded as Xhosas when we are Zulus”: Land, Ethnicity, and the politics of “Bantustan Citizenship”
· George Carr, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, “Diplomatic Chain Reactions: The VELA Incident, a Nuclear South Africa, and International Anti-Nuclear Diplomacy”
Panel IIB: The Politics of Sovereignty and Vulnerability in Comparative Perspective
Chair: Christopher Day, College of Charleston (106 Bond House)
· Lauren Jarvis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Economic Inequality and the Idea of Africa”
· Christian Doll, North Carolina State University, "Sovereignty and Experience: Temporal Tension, NGO Legislation, and the “Antigovernance” Machine in Juba, South Sudan"
· Sara Ghebremicael, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Climate change and food security in Ethiopia
· Beth Whitaker, University of North Carolina-Charlotte and Beth Wellman, University of Memphis, "Divergent Opinions over Diaspora Voting? Evidence from Inside and Outside Kenya."
12:30-2pm: LUNCH AND SERSAS BUSINESS MEETING
Enjoy a catered lunch and reflective discussion about “SERSAS Then and Now,” with Jack Parson, College of Charleston, and other SERSASIANS. We will also hold a brief SERSAS business meeting.
2-3:30pm: SESSION THREE
Panel IIIA: Rhetorical Strategies and the Production of Knowledge (106 Bond House)
Chair: Todd Leedy, University of Florida
· Shannon Vance, East Carolina University, ““The Continent that Lies Beyond:” Navigating Consumptions and Resistances to Colonialism with “Hidden Transcripts” in l’AOF Senegal”
· John Payne, University of Miami, “The Future of Africanism: Insights from Africanist, Critical Theory, and Postmodern Thought on Totalization”
· Marame Gueye, East Carolina University, “Teaching Africa Through Fashion: Sartorial Choices as Rhetoric”
· Denis Waswa, Louisiana State University, “Re-Mapping Kenya’s Green Spaces: The Forest as Site of Post/Colonial Existential Quest”
Panel IIIB: Beyond Achebe and Adichie: 21st Century Stakeholders in the Publishing of African Writers (116 Bond House)
*This is a featured panel of SERSAS 2023 and offers hybrid attendance opportunities. Register for virtual option here: https://bit.ly/beyondachebeandadichie
· Chair: Katrina Spencer, Librarian for African and African American Studies, University of Virginia
· Kenechi Uzor, Iskanchi Press & Magazine
· Ukamaka Olisakwe, Isele Magazine
· Layla Mohamed, Cassava Republic Press
· Gene Kannenberg, Jr., Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University
3:30-3:45: Break
3:45-5:15: SESSION IV
Panel IVA: To Make the World Anew: Black Internationalist Visions of Liberation in Africa & the African Diaspora in the Age of Decolonization (106 Bond)
Chair, Amir Syed, University of Virginia
· Shaun Armstead, Predoctoral Fellow, Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies, University of Virginia, "Never have I felt more accepted any place in the world": Dorothy Irene Height's 1960 Tour of West Africa"
· Naseemah Mohamed, Research Fellow, Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia, "A Government in Exile: ZAPU’s visions of state-making and a decolonial world during Zimbabwe's liberation struggle (1965-1980)."
· Robert Trent Vinson, Chair & Director, Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies, University of Virginia, "From South Africa to the South Bronx: Afrika Bambaataa, the Universal Zulu Nation and the Global Spread of Progressive Hip-Hop Culture"
Panel IVB: Making Sense of Origins and Ends in Socio-Cultural Context (116 Bond)
Chair: Lisa Lindsay, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
· Nancy Andoh, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Mad Enough to Kill: Understanding the Complexities of Suicide and Akan Cosmology on the Middle Passage”
· Phillip Cantrell, Longwood University, "The Persistence of Gihanga: Rwanda’s Origin Myth as Precursor to Violence"
· Seth Palmer, Christopher Newport University, “Becoming Merina in Besakoa: Valovotaka Status, Funerary Politics, and the Contested Origins of a ‘Lost People’”
· Aisha Muhammad, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Decay in Cityscapes: Examining the Work of Gosette Lubondo and Sammy Baloji”
Dinner off-site, more information to follow