Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

Upcoming conference at Warwick University

titled "African Athena - Black Athena Revisited "

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/research/africanathena

AFRICAN ATHENA: BLACK ATHENA 20 YEARS ON...
CONFERENCE 6-8 NOVEMBER 2008.

African Athena was Bernal's original title for Black Athena, his "infamous"
work that has confronted the modern academy with some of the most
challenging questions it has faced over the last twenty years. This
interdisciplinary conference seeks neither to demonize nor lionize Bernal's
book, but to open dialogue on the issues it has posed: can a myth of
Afrocentrism ever be a useful narrative in contemporary culture? How do
Africanizing and classicizing cultures interface and interpenetrate in the
arts and lives of Africans, Europeans, Caribbeans and Americans? Does Black
Athena offer new possibilities for comparison between African and Jewish
diasporas, cultures and struggles? How do we deal with the difficult
collusion of essentialist and poststructuralist discourses in "postcolonial"
thought? These issues are only a point of departure.

Please direct any enquiries to: Dr. Daniel Orrells, D.Orrells@warwick.ac.uk

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Professor Martin Bernal (Cornell University)
 
Professor Paul Gilroy (London School of Economics)
 
Professor Shelley Haley (Hamilton College)
 
Professor Stephen Howe (University of Bristol)
 
Professor Partha Mitter (University of Sussex)
 
Professor Valentin Y. Mudimbe (Duke University)
 
Professor Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan (University of California, Irvine)
 
Professor Patrice Rankine (Purdue University)

Professor Robert J.C. Young (New York University)