Not much has been written about the nexus between spatiality and spirituality in the African experience. Where space has been the subject of intellectual/academic scrutiny, it has often been through sociopolitical prisms. The purpose of this collection of essays is to expand the conversation, through rigorous interdisciplinary scholarly discourse, to cover the centrality of space as fundamental to African culture, identity, personhood, and spiritualities.
Contributors are invited to submit essays that discuss or examine African sacred spaces. We encourage assessments and re-assessments of the very notion of the sacred as integral to cultural, historical, social, and individual identity. Papers on ethnic sacred spaces will be considered. Comparative, analytical, and polemical essays are also welcome. Scholars of history, literary studies, postcoloniality, anthropology, language, linguistics, culture will be particularly interested.
Essays will be subsumed under the following themes/rubrics:
1. Land and the Sacred in the African Imaginary
2. Gender, Land and the Sacred
3. Personhood and Land
4. Ritual and African space
5. Land in African rites of passage
6. African Land, Sustainability and The Sacred
7. Space and the Sacred in African(ist) thought/discourse
8. Individual space versus collective space
9. African Sacred Groves
Deadline: January 31, 2014
• Abstracts of approximately 250 words should precede or accompany each essay.
• Essays should be approximately 30 typed, double-spaced APA, or Chicago style formats.
• All essays must be sent to the Editors listed below.
• We need 6 more essays to complete the list of contributors
Dr. Julius O. Adekunle
Professor of History
Monmouth University
Long Branch, NJ
jadekunlATmonmouth.edu
Dr. ‘BioDun J. Ogundayo
Associate Professor of French & Comparative Literature
University of Pittsburgh, Bradford, PA
Email: ogundayoATpitt.edu