Boredom has had many historians, and a number of book-length studies are available on the topic. Most of these are focused on the white male canon of western literature. In the edited collection by Paul Tyambe Zeleze and Cassandra Rachel Veney, Leisure in Urban Africa, leisure is theorised in ways that can usefully be placed alongside a new theory of boredom, and to disaggregate the pursuit of leisure from the tyranny of free time. Papers are invited on aspects related to boredom and disaffection, boredom as a force for political mobilisation, boredom and the mass migrations of Africans we observe daily, boredom and the search for adventure, and the gendered nature of boredom.
The papers will use Wainaina’s lecture and Quayson’s work as their foundation texts, and the intention is to develop research agendas for future work. Early career scholars are particularly invited to take part in these discussions. Prof Ato Quayson will be an active participant in the panels and will deliver a mini keynote summarizing the new insights of the panels and mapping new directions for scholarship.
Panel organizers: Carli Coetzee and Ato Quayson.
Papers will be presented at the African Literature Association Conference in Atlanta, USA from April 6-9, 2016. It would also be published in the Journal of African Cultural Studies.
Please send 200 word abstracts to Carli Coetzee (cc76@soas.ac.uk) by 15 October 2015 using the subject heading “Boredom.” Further information about the conference can be found here: http://africanlit.org/annual-conference/upcoming-conference/.
References
Binyavanga Wainaina. 2015. “Africa is Taking its Own Shape – And you are Not Even in that Conversation”, public lecture delivered in Johannesburg. (http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/06/03/africa-is-taking-its-own-shape-and-you-are-not-even-in-that-conversation-binyavanga-wainaina-delivers-a-public-lecture-in-joburg/)
Ato Quayson. 2014. Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the itineraries of Transnationalism.
Patricia Meyer Spacks. 1995. Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind.
Paul Tyambe Zeleze and Cassandra Rachel Veney (editors). 2003. Leisure in Urban Africa.