<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Dear Wits and Michigan colleagues: </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Below is a CFP for a Mellon-funded workshop on ‘African Print Cultures’, to be held outside Johannesburg from 20 to 23 June 2016. This is intended to be quite a small-scale occasion. We are particularly interested in having proposals from graduate students who are working in (or are interested in working in) this area. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Proposals are due to the addresses given below by Monday, 5 October 2015. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Yours, </div><div class="">Derek Peterson & Isabel Hofmeyr</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div style="text-align: center;" class=""><b class="">** African Print Cultures **</b></div><div style="text-align: center;" class="">20-23 June, 2015</div><div style="text-align: center;" class="">Johannesburg, South Africa</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Scholars have generally read newspapers as a conveyance for data or as an means by which to index the changing tides of public opinion. In this workshop we will engage with news-making as politically and culturally constitutive work. We want to bring into view the editors and publishers who financed the press, set agendas, and produced the news. In the absence of ready-made audiences, <span lang="EN-US" class="">African editors had to
create interest groups. They used the techniques of their trade—cutting-and-pasting,
summarization, citation, excision, juxtaposition—to make connections and draw
linkages. Newspapers were therefore the forcing-houses for new political
solidarities. They were also the hosts for new forms of addressivity. They were the incubators for the
creation of literary genres and the genesis of new African voices.</span> </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Here we want to focus on the choices that editors made as they recruited audiences;
on the itineraries that journalists embarked upon as they identified and composed news; on the
literary experiments that newspapermen sponsored as they looked for new voices
with which to speak. Our aim, collectively, is to develop a comparative approach to the history of newspaper journalism in Africa. We are particularly interested in mapping out the networks of textual exchange that linked southern Africa’s newspapers with newspapers in east and west Africa. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Our starting-place will be a new book, shortly to appear on the University of Michigan Press, entitled _African Print Cultures: Newspapers and their Publics in the Twentieth Century_ (ed. Derek Peterson, Emma Hunter, and Stephanie Newell). The book largely focuses on the newspaper industries of Anglophone East and West Africa. In the workshop we hope to open up a comparative conversation about the newspaper industry in southern Africa. The following scholars have committed to attending this workshop: </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">From Wits: Hlonipha Mokoena, Bhekizizwe Peterson, Brenda Mhlambi, & Isabel Hofmeyr</div><div class="">From U-M: Judy Irvine, Stephanie Santana-Bosch, Kelly Askew, & Derek Peterson</div><div class="">From UCT: Khwezi Mkhize</div><div class="">From the University of Pretoria: Corinne Sandwith & Archie Dick</div><div class="">From the United Kingdom: Karin Barber (Birmingham), Emma Hunter (Edinburgh) & Leslie James (Birmingham)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Participants will compose pre-circulated papers for discussion. As one focus of the workshop is concerned with the materiality of print, we would encourage presenters to incorporate examples of pages and cuttings in their presentations.<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We encourage graduate students and colleagues interested in participating in this occasion to submit a one-page proposal to us by <b class="">Monday, 5 October 2015. </b></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Isabel Hofmeyr, <<a href="mailto:Isabel.Hofmeyr@wits.ac.za" class="">Isabel.Hofmeyr@wits.ac.za</a>></div><div class="">Derek Peterson, <<a href="mailto:drpeters@umich.edu" class="">drpeters@umich.edu</a>></div></body></html>