Stream conveners:
Ana Lucia Araujo aaraujo@howard.edu (Department of History, Howard University)
Mariana P. Candido (Department of History, Emory University)
Rui Gomes Coelho (Department of Archaeology, Durham University)
The study of the materialities of global Africa has gained increasing attention among archaeologists, art historians, anthropologists, museum scholars, and curators over the past decades. More recently, this interest has intersected with a broader “material turn” in disciplines that have not traditionally engaged with things as either source or subject. This shift reflects both a critical awareness of the importance of material culture in representing and engaging with communities for whom writing was not the primary mode of producing and circulating knowledge, and a recognition of the political centrality of materiality throughout history. The trend has manifested in three different directions.
First, there has been a growing visibility of archaeological projects that seek to recover the complex histories of societies across the continent, from today’s territories of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, the Republic of Benin, and Nigeria, to Ethiopia, Mauritius, and South Africa. These projects are marked by a striking methodological diversity, ranging from environmental science to digital approaches, and they bring light to histories that are as ancient as several millennia or as recent as yesterday.
Second, the intensification of debates around restitution and repatriation of African art and heritage in the past six years reached countries such as France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, which in a few cases have led to the reconfiguration of exhibitions and museums. Examples include the new Arts of Africa Gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the transformation of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren in Belgium, now the Africa Museum. Also, the Tropenmuseum in the Netherlands, not only changed its name to Wereldmuseum, but also closed one site (Ber en Dal) and renovated its Amsterdam’s exhibitions displaying African art and material culture. The creation of the new Humboldt Forum in Berlin added more controversy to these debates.
Third, the creation of new museums in countries such as Senegal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Benin, and Nigeria to respond to a national desire of developing institutions to house and display West African art and cultural heritage, including the possibly repatriated items looted during the wars that led to the conquest and colonization of most part of the African continent in the late nineteenth century.
As these three trends unfold, a growing number of historians have been embracing the study of African arts and materialities, including the study of daily objects and articles of prestige, to understand the African past. By doing so, historians, as well as archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians show how the history of African
peoples and societies are entangled with the material world they created, used, and exchanged in the past and how these connections continue to impact the present.
We invite panels and papers in all disciplines examining any dimension connecting individual peoples and groups and material culture of Africa and its diasporas, and focusing on any periods, regions, and scales. We particularly welcome contributions that engage with interdisciplinary questions and methods, as well as research that highlights community-based approaches and other forms of collaborative knowledge production.
Send your paper or panel proposal to three conveners:
Ana Lucia Araujo aaraujo@howard.edu (Department of History, Howard University)
Mariana P. Candido (Department of History, Emory University)
Rui Gomes Coelho rui.g.coelho@durham.ac.uk (Department of Archaeology, Durham University)
