Souffles, Issue # 4
(Winter 2025)
In the 1960s, as African states gained independence, the Omani-Kenyan historian Ali Mazru spoke optimistically of Afro-Arab identity and "Afro-Arab futures." More recently, younger scholars, inspired by Mazrui, are reviving the idea of the "Afro-Arab," speaking of "Afro-Arab imaginaries," and even "Afro-Arab Studies." What is Afro-Arab? - an identity, a region, a political community? How is the relationship between the overlapping regions of Africa and the Arab world, understood in different parts of the Global North and the Global South? The aim of this issue of Souffles (Fall 2024) is to historicize different conceptions of Africa and the Arab world. We invite papers that draw comparisons and connections between Africa and the Arab world and their respective diaspora communities. Our aim is to start a dialogue across languages and disciplines between scholars working at the nexus of Africa and the Arab world, and to transcend long-standing epistemic barriers (colonial and postcolonial) separating Africa from the Arabic-speaking world. The objective is look at Afro-Arab encounters from the Indian Ocean to the New World; to interrogate the geographic designations and theoretical categories that shape discourses about Africa and the Arab world; to spotlight communities left out of pan-nationalist narratives, Arabic-speaking communities of West and East Africa, and non-Arabic speaking communities in North Africa. We are interested in state policy, gender, ethnicity and social movements, political and economic development, as well as cultural and intellectual flows, religious and secular, pan-African and pan-Arab networks across the Sahara, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea.
If interested, please submit a 300 word proposal to:
soufflesmagazine2023@gmail.com