The Performance of Pan-Africanism: from Colonial Exhibitions to Black and African Cultural Festivals
Keynote speakers:
Andrew Apter (UCLA)
Cheryl Finley (Cornell University)
Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University)
Co-organizers:
Martin Munro (Florida State University)
Tsitsi Jaji (University of Pennsylvania)
David Murphy (University of Stirling)
In April 1966, thousands of artists, musicians, performers and writers from across Africa and its diaspora gathered in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to take part in the First World Festival of Black and African Culture (Premier Festival Mondial des arts nègres). The festival constituted a highly symbolic moment both in the era of decolonization and the push for civil rights for African Americans in the United States. In essence, the festival sought to perform an emerging pan-African culture, to give concrete cultural expression to the ties that would bind the African ‘homeland’ to black people in the diaspora. On the…
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