Next Journalism [Search results for asia literature] 

We are inviting academic editorial contributors to a new reference work: Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia.

The four volumes include:

* Volume 1: Middle East
* Volume 2: Africa
* Volume 3: East Asia and Southeast Asia
* Volume 4: West, Central, and South Asia

In our age of globalization and multiculturalism, it has never been more important for Americans to understand and appreciate foreign cultures-how people live, love, and learn in areas of the world unfamiliar to most U.S. students and the general public. The Cultural Sociology encyclopedia takes a step forward toward presenting concise information with historical and contemporary coverage of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, as four volumes of area studies illuminate the powerful influence of culture on society.

Each title comprises approximately 200 articles organized chronologically and alphabetically, addressing such academic disciplines as sociology, political science, women’s studies, business, history, religion, law, health, education, economics, and geography. It is the intent of the encyclopedia to convey what daily life was/is like for people in these regions. Each article ranges from 600 to 3,000 words. We are now making new assignments due December 1, 2010.

This comprehensive project will be published by SAGE Reference in 2012 and will be marketed to academic and public libraries as a print and digital product available to students via the library’s electronic services. The General Editor, who will be reviewing each submission to the project, is Dr. Orlando Patterson at Harvard University.

If you are interested in contributing to this cutting-edge reference, it is a unique opportunity to contribute to the contemporary literature, redefining sociological issues in today’s terms. Moreover, it can be a notable publication addition to your CV/resume and broaden your publishing credits. SAGE Publications offers an honorarium ranging from SAGE book credits for smaller articles up to a free set of the printed product or access to the online product for contributions totaling 10,000 words or more.

The list of available articles is already prepared, and as a next step we will e-mail you the Article List (Excel file) from which you can select topics that best fit your expertise and interests. Additionally, Style and Submission Guidelines will be provided that detail article specifications.

If you would like to contribute to building a truly outstanding reference with the Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia, please contact me by the e-mail information below. Please provide a brief summary of your academic/publishing credentials specific to the region.

For inquiries, and to ask for a list of topics, get in touch with:

Lisbeth Rogers
Author Manager
Golson Media
culturalsociology@golsonmedia.com

Deadline: 30 November 2011

The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies publishes interdisciplinary and cross-cultural articles, interviews, and creative writings on the literatures, the histories, the politics, and the arts whose focus, locales, or subjects involve Britain and other European countries and their former colonies, the now decolonized, independent nations in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and also Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Something New out of Twenty-First-Century Africa?

A call for essays for a special issue of The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies

The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies announces a special issue on new writing from Africa, to be guest-edited by Simon Lewis (College of Charleston) and Lindsey Green-Simms (American University), and published in spring 2013. The editors are looking for articles that address the ways in which the economic, political, and technological changes of the early 21st century have affected the modes of writing on the African continent.

While this theme may be broadly interpreted, the editors are especially interested in articles that engage the following types of questions:

* How is 21st-century African writing reconfiguring the debates about tradition vs. modernity?
* How are new media and communication technologies affecting literary expression and readerships?
* Has the internet created space for the vernacular, the original, and the local?
* How are new geopolitical formations shaping literary production and distribution?
* How are new political alignments within the Global South affecting the production of African literature?
* Are new strands of nationalism and/or pan-Africanism emerging, or is African literature more profoundly marked by cosmopolitanism, and narratives of migration and/or entrapment?
* Does it make sense any more to think of African writing as postcolonial?
* How are new trends in environmentalism and new biotechnologies affecting understanding of (human) nature, sustainability, and individual and collective right-living?
* What is the relationship between the African novel and modes of popular culture such as Nollywood, hip-hop, or self-help manuals?

Please send substantial, completed essays of 5,000 to 8,000 words to Lindsey Green-Simms and Simon Lewis at lewiss@cofc.edu before November 30th, 2011. Essays must be written in English, using MLA format for style and citations. In order to facilitate blind review, please do not include your name or affiliation in the body of the essay, but provide a separate cover-sheet with that information.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: lewiss@cofc.edu

For submissions: lewiss@cofc.edu

Website: http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/litphi/jcps/jcps.htm

Deadline: 30 November 2011

"Something New out of Twenty-First-Century Africa?"

A call for essays for a special issue of the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies

The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies announces a special issue on new writing from Africa, to be guest-edited by Simon Lewis (College of Charleston) and Lindsey Green-Simms (American University), and published in spring 2013. The editors are looking for articles that address the ways in which the economic, political, and technological changes of the early 21st century have affected the modes of writing on the African continent.

While this theme may be broadly interpreted, the editors are especially interested in articles that engage the following types of questions:

-How is 21st-century African writing reconfiguring the debates about tradition vs. modernity?

-How are new media and communication technologies affecting literary expression and readerships?

-Has the internet created space for the vernacular, the original, and the local?

-How are new geopolitical formations shaping literary production and distribution?

- How are new political alignments within the Global South affecting the production of African literature?

-Are new strands of nationalism and/or pan-Africanism emerging, or is African literature more profoundly marked by cosmopolitanism, and narratives of migration and/or entrapment?

-Does it make sense any more to think of African writing as postcolonial?

-How are new trends in environmentalism and new biotechnologies affecting understanding of (human) nature, sustainability, and individual and collective right-living?

-What is the relationship between the African novel and modes of popular culture such as Nollywood, hip-hop, or self-help manuals?

Please send substantial, completed essays of 5,000 to 8,000 words to Lindsey Green-Simms and Simon Lewis at lewiss@cofc.edu before November 30th, 2011. Essays must be written in English, using MLA format for style and citations. In order to facilitate blind review, please do not include your name or affiliation in the body of the essay, but provide a separate cover-sheet with that information.

The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies publishes interdisciplinary and cross-cultural articles, interviews, and creative writings on the literatures, the histories, the politics, and the arts whose focus, locales, or subjects involve Britain and other European countries and their former colonies, the now decolonized, independent nations in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and also Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: lewiss@cofc.edu

For submissions: lewiss@cofc.edu

Website: http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/litphi/jcps/jcps.htm

Deadline: 15 January 2011

Special Issue of Northeast African Studies: “Space, Mobility and Translocal Connections across the Red Sea Area since 1500”

The study of the history of oceans and seas has been subject to a revival of interest in recent years. The “new thalassology”, as it has been coined by two scholars, is driven by efforts to develop new approaches to the study of global history in a way that moves away from grand generalizations. It also aims to challenge the area-studies paradigm by avoiding sharp, and oftentimes arbitrary, breaks between world areas. Instead, it attempts to think and imagine global history through the webs of connections, interactions and networks both within and between different terrestrial and aquatic regions of the world.

The study of the Red Sea maritime space or region is a latecomer to this scholarly arena. The dry, hot, and generally inhospitable environment of its littorals has marginalized it and promoted its perception as merely an interface, a transit space, between the maritime systems of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In addition, the African/Middle Eastern Studies divide has inadvertently masked the animated and intense connections across the Red Sea area, chiefly, but not exclusively, between northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Yet the particularly narrow bodies of water in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have always promoted the brisk flows and criss-crossing of people, goods and ideas across this area.

This special issue of Northeast African Studies seeks to investigate the variety of transmarine connections, interactions and exchanges in the Red Sea area and propose new ways to rethink and imagine this historical space sui generis and its connections with other regions. Among an array of themes which privilege the relationships between actors, space, mobility, connectivities and networks, we seek contributions that examine the ways by which a host of imperial powers, as well as the advent of the nation-state, influenced, transformed and reconfigured notions of space, borders, mobility and identities across the Red Sea area since the sixteenth century.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Empire and notions of sovereignty, boundary and space in the Red Sea region
• Imperial maritime control and policing, mobility and the production of categories of ‘legality’/‘illegality’ in the Red Sea (e.g. Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Italy)
• Empire, nation, state, and the transformation of Red Sea littoral identities (cosmopolitan to nation-state?)
• Histories of piracy, smuggling and contraband in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden
• The production, commercialization and consumption of stimulants, intoxicants and psychoactive substances in the Red Sea area (e.g. coffee, khat, tobacco)
• North-east African communities in Arabia (e.g. Zabid, Jiddah, Aden, Mukha, Hudayda, Sanaa)
• Arabian communities in North-east Africa (Hadramis, Yemenis, in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti; the Rashayda in Eritrea/Sudan)
• The histories of Red Sea and Gulf of Aden port cities/towns/entrepots and inter-port connections
• Slavery, the slave trade and abolition in the Red Sea area
• Labor, commercialization and the global dimensions of Red Sea marine economies (e.g. pearls)
• Red Sea labor flows (seasonal or more permanent)
• Egyptian/Hadrami/Yemeni/Hijazi/Indian merchants, trade and brokerage networks in the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden
• Is there a Red Sea architectural style? (Sawakin, Jiddah, Massawa, Hudayda, Mukha, Djibouti)
• Shipping networks / Sailing boat vs. steamer in the Red Sea since ca. 1830
• Inter-coastal trading and cabotage networks
• Inter-coastal financial connections: credit institutions and currencies
• Red Sea crossings and the Muslim hajj to Mecca / European colonial control and the hajj
• Cross-Red Sea Sufi networks and circuits (e.g. the Khatmiyya)
• Hijazi, Hadrami and Yemeni Islamic religious networks (e.g. legal scholars) in the Horn of Africa
• North-east African Muslims in the religious academies of the Hijaz and Zabid, and back in the Horn
• Islamic revivalist and reform movements and Red Sea connections (e.g. the Wahhabiyya)
• Red Sea connections, culture and identities in travel accounts/literature
• The politics of Red Sea cartographies (16th – 20th cent.)
• Red Sea connections with other areas: the eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, the Swahili Coast

Article proposals (500 words) as well as any inquiries regarding the issue should be sent to the issue guest editor, Jonathan Miran (Jonathan.Miran@wwu.edu).

Deadlines

15 January 2011: submission of article proposals
1 March 2011: notification of acceptance
30 July 2011: submission of articles

Jonathan Miran
Associate Professor (History, Islam, Africa)
Department of Liberal Studies
Western Washington University

Dates: 3 March 2011 (announcement of regional winners), May 2011 (announcement of overall winners)

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, internationally recognised for its role in celebrating ground-breaking works from both new and established writers, has today revealed the literary icons of tomorrow in the South East Asia and Pacific regional shortlist for the 2011 Prize.

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, supported by the Macquarie Group Foundation and now in its 25th year, has selected both household names and other emerging stars for the shortlist for Best Book and Best First Book awards. The winners from Africa will go on to compete against writers from across the Commonwealth at the Commonwealth Writers' Prize's final programme to be held at Sydney Writers' Festival from 16-22 May.

Africa Best Book:

• The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone)
• Men of the South by Zukiswa Wanner (South Africa)
• The Unseen Leopard by Bridget Pitt (South Africa)
• Oil on Water by Helon Habila (Nigeria)
• Blood at Bay by Sue Rabie (South Africa)
• Banquet at Brabazan by Patricia Schonstein (South Africa)

• Happiness is a Four Letter Word by Cynthia Jele (South Africa)
• Bitter Leaf by Chioma Okereke (Nigeria)
• The Fossil Artist by Graeme Friedman (South Africa)
• Colour Blind by Uzoma Uponi (Nigeria)
• Voice of America by E. C. Osondu (Nigeria)
• Wall of Days by Alastair Bruce (South Africa)

The regional winners of the Best Book and Best First Book prizes will be announced on the 3rd March, with the final programme commencing on the 16th May at Sydney Writers' Festival in Australia. This will bring together the finalists from the four different regions of the Commonwealth, and the two overall winners will be announced on the 21st May.

Commonwealth Foundation Director, Dr. Mark Collins, said:

"The Commonwealth Writers' Prize aims to reward the best of Commonwealth fiction written in English and underlines our commitment to promoting cultural exchange and diversity. This year the range of subjects, the breadth of genres and the diversity of writers will bring the very best of Commonwealth literature to new audiences. The support of the Macquarie Group Foundation has seen the Prize gain in international standing and expand its reach. This year we're delighted to be holding our final award programme in Sydney, the home of Macquarie, at Sydney Writers' Festival."

David Clarke, Chairman of the Macquarie Group Foundation, the main supporter of the Prize, added:

"The Macquarie Group Foundation's continuing support of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in its 25th year is the cornerstone of Macquarie's arts philanthropy. The Prize plays a valuable role in recognising and rewarding diverse literary talents and, in so doing, connects global communities."