5th Global Africas: Afrotopias

April 10, 2025
– April 11, 2025
Afrotopias

About the Event

In his 2016 essay "Afrotopia," Senegalese scholar Felwine Sarr posits the African continent of the 21st century as poised to become “an active utopia” that engages critically with the past and draws extensively on and cultivates Africa’s own indigenous resources, both natural and cultural. Rather than describe what Afrotopia will be, Sarr foregrounds the multifaceted work required to first imagine it by focusing on what he calls “Afrotopos” or “Africa’s Atopos.” Sarr defines Afrotopos as the “as-yet-inhabited site of this Africa to come,” that “requires investment in thought and imagination,” a “space of the possible that has not yet been realized, but where nothing insurmountable will prevent it from coming into existence.” Denouncing the myth of “infinite economic growth within a finite world,” Sarr stresses that such work necessarily involves new economic models and requires “a more acute environmental awareness” in the face of “climate change and reduced biodiversity.” Decolonization of thought and new metaphors drawn from local conditions, knowledge, and needs and are the essential tools to carry out the imagining of Afrotopos, which Sarr presents as predicated on “Africa’s creolization” through a reflexive process of “learning to get to know ourselves anew” and by “proposing new answers to the question of knowing who we are.” Evidence of this endeavor of “learning to get to know ourselves anew” is at the heart of the “Report on the Restitution of Cultural Heritage,” which Sarr coauthored with French art historian Bénédicte Savoy in 2018. This crucial report emphasized the existing and increasing calls for the restitution of African cultural objects located in institutions in the Global North. Evidence of this renewed quest for identity can also be read in the completion of the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, Senegal in 2018, and the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize going to Burkinabé architect Diébédo Francis Kéré for his innovative site-specific architecture, which prioritizes using local and renewable materials.

While Sarr’s propositions are future-oriented and seek to affect change worldwide through changes on the continent, this interdisciplinary conference asks what other kinds of Afrotopias have been imagined and created while also attending to who is responsible for the realization of such Afrotopias and who or what generates “insurmountable” obstacles to their actualization and maintenance. Key questions include: Is Afrotopia always for everyone? What distinguishes an Afrotopia from an Afro(dis)topia? What do Afrotopias reveal about structures of power? When and where have representations of Afrotopias emerged? What do the similarities and differences between Afrotopias generated on the continent and outside of it teach us?

Though the conference theme stems from a Francophone context, we invite comparative approaches that span the African continent and extend to the African diaspora.

Please send proposals of 250-300 words for 20-minute presentations by November 25, 2024. We also encourage panel proposals of 3-4 presentations.

Possible topics may include:

  • Pre & Post Colonial African Utopias
  • Pan-Africanism, pan-Africanism
  • Gender Utopias
  • Ecocriticism & More-Than-Human / Posthuman Utopias
  • Sci-Fi & Speculative Fiction
  • Afrofuturism
  • Performance Studies, Music, Dance, Theater
  • Diasporic Utopias, Transnational Black Solidarity
  • Dictator Utopias
  • Négritude
  • Visual Culture & Art
  • Comics, Graphic Novels, Bandes Dessinées, Animation, Video Games
  • Film
  • Anthropology and Archives
  • Monuments
  • Architecture & Urban Planning

Bibliography

Sarr, Felwine. Afrotopia. Philippe Rey, 2016.

Sarr, Felwine. Afrotopia. Translated by Drew S. Burk and Sarah Jones-Boardman. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Thursday, April 10

9 to 9:30 a.m. Registration and breakfast (SSB 214)

9:40 a.m. Opening Remarks (SSB 218)

9:45 to 11:15 a.m. Panel 1 - West African Logotopias: Literature, Testimony, and History as Social Re-Imaginaries (SSB 218)

Chair: Joseph Hellweg

  • Joachim Adams (Florida State University), “Challenging the Dystopia: Queerness and African Identity in De purs hommes”
  • Sawel Awuni (University of Mississippi), “Le Sens utopique dans les discours politiques en Afrique de l’Ouest avant et pendant les campagnes électorales”
  • Rosa de Jorio (University of North Florida), “Contested Memories: Family, State, and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Mali”
  • Joseph Hellweg (Florida State University), “Dozo Song, Dozo Oath: Relational Causality as a Principle of Political Emancipation in Ancient Mali and Contemporary Côte d’Ivoire”

11:15 to 11:30 a.m. Coffee Break (SSB 214)

11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Panel 2 - Mining and Creating Francophone Afrotopias (SSB 218)

Chair: Michelle Bumatay

  • Fabiola Obame (Université Omar Bongo), “Regard sur les pratiques écoculturelles dans le Bassin du Congo : de la décolonisation à l’émergence des savoirs précoloniaux”
  • Joachim Adams (Florida State University), “Afrotopian Futures: Feminist and Queer Reimaginations in Werewere Liking’s Elle sera de jaspe et de corail”
  • Kristen Stern (University of Massachusetts Lowell), “Looking for and making other worlds: 1949 Books and Après la première page”
  • Michelle Bumatay (Florida State University), “Reine Dibussi and Afiri Studio: Creating Inclusive Afrotopias”

1 to 2 p.m. Lunch (SSB 214)

2 to 3:15 p.m. Panel 3 - Nigeriatopias: Christian, Muslim, and Diasporic Projects for Social Well-Being, in and beyond Yorubaland (SSB 218)

Chair: Ridwan Balogun

  • Florence Egbeyale (Florida State University), “Afrotopia at the Intersection of Culture and Faith: Abiyamo’s Role in a Church-Led Maternity Center in Southwest Nigeria”
  • Zainab Winjobi-Arikewuyo (Florida State University), “Islamoitopia in the Diaspora: Asalatu and the Cultural Flourishing of Yoruba Muslim Women in the U.S.”
  • Ridwan Balogun (Florida State University), “Islamotopia in Practice: Yoruba Salafi Adaptations in Nigeria’s Public Health Sphere”

3:15 to 3:30 p.m. Coffee Break (SSB 214)

3:30-5 p.m. Panel 4 - Performance and Afrotopias (SSB 218)

Chair: Mehdi Chalmers

  • Frank Gunderson (Florida State University), “Sounding the Table Ronde – Joseph Kabasele and the Sonic Promise of Independence in African Jazz”
  • Mehdi Chalmers (Florida State University), “A Greater Guinea: Afro-Caribbean Reimaginings of Homeland in Haitian Vodou, Rasin Music, and Poetry”
  • Victoria Barbara Lopes dos Santos (Princeton University), “Buruburu: A Reading of the Modern-Colonial Sovereignty Model Based on the Orisha Omolu”
  • Melani Shi (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), “Dancing Africa-Asia: The Reverse Globalization of Kizomba”

5:15 to 6:30 p.m. Opening Reception (DIF 4th Floor)

Friday, April 11

9 to 9:40 a.m. Registration and breakfast (SSB 201)

9:45 to 11:00 a.m. Panel 5 - Inventing Queer Côte d’Ivoire: Trans and Gay Activism as Afrotopian Practice in an Anti-Queer Dystopia (SSB 218)

Chair: Joseph Hellweg

  • Monroe Dosso, “An Overseas Afrotopia: Migration as Path to Safety in a Diasporic Queer Community”
  • Moustapha Hassan, “Visions of Safety: A Community-Based Strategy to Ensure Ivorian Queer Security in Times of Crisis”
  • Katia Madou Franck Lokpo, “Activist Networks as Proximal Afrotopia: NGOs as Resources in the Struggle for Trans Dignity in Côte d’Ivoire”

11:00 to 11:15 a.m. Coffee Break (SSB 201)

11:15 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Panel 6 - Afrotopias in Francophone Literature & Film (SSB 218)

Chair: Carine Schermann

  • Stève Puig (St. John’s University), “L’« Afrotopie » chez Nadia Yala Kisukidi: désespoir et marronnage dans La dissociation”
  • Brigitte Tsobgny (Emory University), “Femme du ciel et des tempêtes de Wilfried N’Sondé : fédération des savoirs et amitié entre les peuples, alliée de la cause environnementale”
  • Thomas Muzart (Pomona College), “Politique du ‘faire corps avec la terre’ dans Rouge Impératrice de Léonora Miano”
  • Brigid Enchill (University of Kansas), “Afrotopia, Speculative Fiction and the Future of a Reimagined Africa in Sylvestre Amoussou’s L’Orage africain”

12:45 to 2:00 p.m. Lunch (SSB 201)

2 to 3:30 p.m. Panel 7 - Afrotopias in the Diaspora (SSB 218)

Chair: Vincent Joos

  • Youri Buyle (University of Pennsylvania), “Reverse Migration and Tales of (Un)successful Entrepreneurship: Black French People’s Contributions to Africa’s Future”
  • Sonjah Stanley Niaah (Institute of Caribbean Studies, The University of the West Indies), Jalani Niaah (Institute of Caribbean Studies, The University of the West Indies), and Nicole Plummer (Institute of Caribbean Studies, The University of the West Indies), “Black Wellness Afrotopias”
  • Carine Schermann (Florida State University), “Scales, Horns, and Furs: The Politics of Caribbean Metamorphoses”
  • Faroukou Mintoiba (Bizim Afrika – African Diaspora Platform in Türkiye), “African Diaspora as Transnational Solidities Spaces Toward a Global Afrotopia”

3:30 to 4:00 p.m. Coffee break (SSB 201)

4:00 to 5:30 p.m. Keynote – Felwine Sarr (DIF 009)

5:30 to 7:00 p.m. Closing Reception (DIF 4th Floor)

Student Services Building, FSU Campus
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