Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

Journal18, Issue #19 (Spring 2025) — Africa: Beyond Borders
Issue edited by Prita Meier, Hermann von Hesse, and Finbarr Barry Flood

Proposals due by 1 April 2024; finished articles will be due by 1 September 2024

Since the dawn of decolonization in 1950s and 1960s Africa, Africanist scholars have emphasized Africa’s connections to the rest of the world before the period of European colonialism. While such views have gained widespread currency among Africanists and some Africanist-adjacent scholars and journals, Africa, apart from the continent’s Mediterranean coast, is hardly discussed beyond these circles. Even when medieval and early modern (art)history and material culture studies claim to be global, Africa often remains on the periphery of the discussion of long-distance trade, artistic innovations, and material cultural exchange.

This special issue of Journal18 invites contributions that examine the confluence of the global, interregional, and local in shaping African arts, material culture, and sartorial practices. It seeks to shift standard accounts of globalization by decentering European empire-building and the colonial archive. The long eighteenth century saw the expansion of African polities and local networks of exchange flourished. Internal trade and migration were just as important as oceanic movements. Traders, merchants, and migrants constantly moved between different societies, actively facilitating the intermingling of diverse cultural forms across great distances. Artisans, both free and enslaved, were also highly mobile during this period. Archipelagic Africa, especially its port cities and mercantile polities, played a significant role in shaping the commodity networks of the entire world.

Among the questions that this issue seeks to address are: Can the discussions of African trade objects help us historicize intra-and inter-continental trade and cultural exchanges? How did African royals, travelers, enslaved, and free individuals engage with the foreign and the faraway? What can African artifacts tell us about religious, aesthetic, and cultural transformations in Africa and its internal or transregional diasporas before the colonial period? What can historic African art collecting tell us about African identities and transcultural negotiations? How did Africa inspire global artistic imaginations during this dynamic period?

We welcome proposals for contributions on related topics, including African architectural forms and notions of space; the visualization of race in pre-colonial Africa; cultures of making and their regional and transregional connections; the reception and reimagining associated with transregional or transcultural reception; African writing and graphic systems; the material cultures of enslaved/free Africans and their experiences of migration and diaspora; and the politics of eighteenth-century heritage conservation.

To submit a proposal, send an abstract (250 words) and brief biography to the following addresses: editor@journal18.org and spm9@nyu.edu, vonhesse@illinois.edu, fbf1@nyu.edu. Articles should not exceed 6000 words (including footnotes) and will be due by 1 September 2024. For further details on submission and Journal18 house style, see Information for Authors.

Issue Editors
Prita Meier, New York University
Hermann von Hesse, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Finbarr Barry Flood, New York University