Recent approaches to African contemporary art often celebrate the advent of a global contemporary art scene in which they see an abolition of the provincialist and historicist concepts that were imposed by the West during the colonial period. One assumes that by taking part in new and post-historical/ post-national networks of exchange, facilitated by large-scale international exhibitions, biennials and fairs, artists can express themselves more truly as they are no longer doomed to wrestle with the notions of the pre-colonial/ colonial; to be measured against Western art-historical paradigms, or to be defined via enduring fictions about their own parochialism.

Keynote Speakers:

• Bill Ayers, author of To Teach: The Journey, in Comics

• Joy James, editor of The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings

• Poets from the workshops with Justice for Domestic Workers (J4DW, London)

The MFA program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville College will host an international conference aimed at bringing into dialogue key figures and debates in the fields of creative writing and critical pedagogy with the hope of establishing frameworks for the development of a critical creative writing pedagogy, i.e., a more committed (emancipatory) teaching praxis within the field of creative writing. The conference will be held June 21-22, 2013.

4th International Conference on Comics and Medicine
Ethics Under Cover: Comics, Medicine and Society
5th - 7th July 2013, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK

Papers on Pinter and his relation to other art forms such as music, the visual arts, film, and television are welcome. Submit a 250-word abstract to Ann C. Hall by March 15 2013.

The University of Alberta Humanities Computing Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce a call for abstracts for its annual conference:

"Digging the Digital 2013: Graduate Research in Digital Humanities,"

Date: Saturday, April 6, 2013
Location: Alumni House, University of Alberta, Edmonton AB
Website: http://diggingdigital2013.wordpress.com
Keynote Speakers: TBA.

We are soliciting abstracts for essays that consider in one way or another representations of the city in steampunk. The term "city" should be understood widely to signify large and small urban spaces and need not be limited to a particular geography or time period. As texts, essays could consider one or more of the following: literature (including YA lit), film, graphic novels, anime, as well as fandom and performance.

The essay will be part of an edited collection exploring steampunk in its literary, filmic, material and fan culture instantiations. The editors have met with multiple university presses who have expressed enthusiastic interest. Completed essays will be expected in early summer 2013.