Negotiating the African Presence: Rastafari Livity and Scholarship

Original call for papers below:

Negotiating the African Presence: Rastafari Livity and Scholarship
Rastafari Conference 2010

Overview

2010 will mark 50 years since the "Report on The Rastafari Movement in Kingston, Jamaica" was first published by the then University College of the West Indies. The Report, authored by M.G. Smith, Roy Augier and Rex Nettleford, validated the University’s sense of its social responsibility and remains one its most successful monographs, having gone through eight reproductions without change in form or content, becoming a most highly referenced document on the Movement.
2010 also marks the 80th anniversary of the Rastafari Movement itself, which has grown from a few visionaries struck by the coronation of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I in November 1930, into a vital force in reconstructing and elevating the African Presence in the Western landscape. 
In recognition of these two anniversaries, and on the birthday of Pan-African champion, the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Institute of Caribbean Studies announces the inaugural Rastafari Studies Conference to be held August 17 – 20, 2010 at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, under the Joint Chairmanship of Vice-Chancellor Emeritus, Prof. Rex Nettleford and Prof. Emeritus, Sir Roy Augier. 

Call for papers Interested scholars are invited to submit abstracts of no more than 150-200 words by April 21, 2010, for presentation of papers on any of the following themes: 

Conference themes

• ‘Reasoning’ and Articulating African ‘Freedom’
• Rastafari Thought and Philosophy
• Rastafari and the City
• Historicising Rastafari and the State
• Rastafari Reflections: The Visit of HIM Emperor Haile Selassie I to Jamaica
• Theocracy, Resistance and the Elaboration of Black Religion
• Routinization and New Religious Movements
• Interrogating Rastafari Icons & Iconographies
• Rastafari Studies and Institutions of Higher Learning
• Rastafari Communities and Sustainable Development
• Rastafari and the Black Intellectual Tradition
• Rastafari Tributes & Testimonies
• Repatriation to Africa as Practice: Case Studies
• Rastafari Geographies and Demographics
• Regional and Global Reach of Rastafari
• Rastafari and other Caribbean Worldviews
• Universities and Corporate Social Responsibility
• Social Movements, Change and Identity
• Diasporan Citizenry
• Youth, Pedagogy and Rebuilding African Diaspora Communities
• Family, Gender & Power in Rastafari
• Staging/Representing Rastafari: Literature, Film, Media & Reggae Festivals
• Rastafari Drumming Rituals
• Health and Healing: Rastafari Ministries
• Negotiating the Twenty First Century: Rastafari in the Global Moment
• Rastafari and the Caribbean Arts 
•  

The conference welcomes creative and non-academic contributions through workshops, video presentations, artistic displays and other forms of expression. 

Abstracts may be submitted to [email protected]

Final date for the submission of abstracts is April 21, 2010. 

For more information visit our website:
http://ocs.mona.uwi.edu/ocs/index.php/irc/