In 2019, Ghana hosted the Year of Return, emphasizing roots tourism, diaspora resettlement and reunification, as well as development. Similarly, there is a growing message of diasporic return in Benin, as in other West African countries, articulated through various initiatives, policies, and cultural movements. We are interested in a feminist analyses of returns and encounters between the Black diaspora and those on the continent. While one wave of scholarship on the African diaspora emphasizes cultural survivals and continuities, a significant body of work offers more ambiguous explorations of ties between Africa and ‘New World’ Black people problematizing a relationship to Africa solely through the fixity of ‘homeland’ and ‘origins’ which tethers the diaspora to the past, obscuring an interrogation of contemporary and mutual African and Black diasporic realities.

If interested in contributing to a Special Issue of Agenda, South Africa's leading feminist journal, please see the call for abstracts: https://www.agenda.org.za/gendered-returns-and-encounters-between-africa-and-its-diasporadoing-diaspora-differently/
 

We kindly ask that you submit a 300 word abstract by 23 February 2025 to the Guest Editors (Dr. Oceane Jasor, oceane.jasor@concordia.ca, and Dr. Nalini Mohabir, nalini.mohabir@concordia.ca). Full papers are expected by end of June 2025.