The international conference organized by the Center for Africana Studies in collaboration with the Provost’s Office, Department of South Asia Studies, Department of Anthropology, Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, Department of Africana Studies, Department of Sociology and the Marginalized Populations Program on ‘Everyday Lives of Instability in the Global South’ will focus on the tactics, strategies, and coping mechanisms that people and communities have developed in the face of the contemporary crisis of (social, economic, and political) instability—manifesting as uncertainty, precarity, insecurity, and/or vulnerability.
Professor AbdouMaliq Simone will present the keynote address "Urban Ecologies of Global Black Life"
Conference Schedule
Day 1
Date: April 4th
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Time
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Event
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Details
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8:30 - 8:40 am
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Opening Remarks
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Professor Wale Adebanwi
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8:40 - 8:50 am
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Address by Provost
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Provost John Jackson
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8:50 - 9:00 am
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Address by Associate Dean for Social Sciences
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Professor Emily Hannum
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9:00 - 9:05 am
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Introduction of Keynote Speaker
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Dr. Gayatri Sahgal
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9:05 – 9:50 am
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Keynote Address
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Professor AbdouMaliq Simone
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10:00 – 11:30 am
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Panel 1: Encountering the State and Civil Society: Vulnerability, Crisis, Solidarity, and Alternative Lives
(1.5 Hour Panel)
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- Hanna Garth (Princeton University, USA) – ‘Collective Organizing and Vernacular Resilience Among Puerto Rican Fishers’
- Jaira Harrington (University of Illinois Chicago) – ‘Slow Erosion: Afro-Brazilian Trust in an Evolving Democracy’
- Leonardo Torres Llerena (University College London) – ‘Living Through Crisis: Everyday Lives of Instability in Peru and the Global South’
- Anderson Henrique Gonçalves dos Santos (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) – ‘Afugentar O Desterro: The Plight for Land and Environment in the Quilonbola Council of the Iguape Basin and Valley’
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11:40 – 11:45 am
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Coffee Break
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11:45 – 13:00 pm
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Panel 2: Biomedical Perdurance and Alternative Lives
(1 hour 15 min Panel)
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- Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori (University of Cambridge): ‘Remaining, Vital Acts, and Possibility: The Exercise of “Sustaining Oneself” in a Residential Care Centre for Older Adults in Lima, Peru’
- Sade K Taiwo (University of Pennsylvania, USA) – ‘Revitalizing Latin American Social Medicine: Addressing Healthcare Crisis Through COVID-19 Experiences in Rio de Janeiro Favelas’
- Iyone Agboraw (University of Pennsylvania, USA) – ‘Opting Out: Nigerian Students’ and Self Destruction as a Mode of Maneuverer’
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13:00 - 15:00 pm
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Lunch
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15:00 – 16:30 pm
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Panel 3: Precarity, Social Suffering, and Future Making
(1.5 Hour Panel)
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- Kevan Harris (UCLA, USA) – ‘The Hidden Injuries of Sanctions: Categorical Erosion and Recognition Ruptures in Contemporary Iran’
- Caroline Wanjiku Kihato (Oxford University, UK and Woodrow Wilson Center, USA) and Loren B. Landau (Oxford University, UK) – ‘An Atlas of Uncertainty: Spatio-Temporal Journeys into and through African Cityscapes’
- Franco Barchiesi (Ohio State University, USA) – ‘Bounded Sovereignty: Precarity, Blackness, and the Rhetoric of African Resilience’
- Mikias Sissay (Temple University, USA) – ‘Conflict-induced Narratives and Its Impact on Everyday Life: A Look into Ethiopia’s 2020-2022 Civil War and Its Effect on Post-Conflict Reconciliation’
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16:30 – 16:45 pm
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Coffee Break
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16:45- 18:00 pm
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Panel 4: Climate Adaptation and the Struggle for Sustenance
(1 hour 15 min Panel)
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- Tayeba Batool (University of Pennsylvania, USA) – ‘Examining the Urban “Ecologist” as Political Figure of Climate Change in Pakistan’
- Briana Hemphill (John Hopkins University, USA) – ‘Land, Food, and Freedom: The Struggle for Food Autonomy in Haiti and Georgia’
- Jamila Hamidu (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity) – ‘Making sense of climate displacement in West Africa: Communities in search of a promised land’
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Day 2
Date: April 5th
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Day 2
Date: 5th April
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Time
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Event
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Details
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9:00 – 9:30 am
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Opening Remarks
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By Professor Michael Hanchard
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9:30 – 11:30 am
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Panel 5: Idioms and Practices of Resilience, Subversion, and Agency
(2 Hour Panel)
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- Juan Suarez Ontaneda (Bryn Mawr College, USA) – ‘Afro-Pacific Teratology: La tunda and the Idiom, for Violence in the Ecuador-Colombia Border’
- Amiel Bize (Cornell University, USA) – ‘Finders Keepers: Ku-okota and the Right to Salvage’
- Kristof Titeca (University of Antwerp, Belgium) Peacekeepers as Vampires: Agency, Rumors, and Protection in LRA-affected Areas in North-Eastern Congo’
- Nicki Kindersley (Cardiff University, Wales) with Mawal Marko Gatkuoth, Manal Adbulaziz Mudis, and others – ‘Where will those with no buttocks go to? Popular analysis of exploitative life on the South Sudan–Sudan borderlands’
- Chwienui Helen Ghogomu Gayelle (University of New Mexico, USA) – ‘The Invention of the “Motoman”: How the Profession Displays a Prosaic Figure of Vernacular Resilience in Cameroon’
- Brian Klein (University of Michigan, USA) – ‘Against Extractivism: Moral Economies of Everyday Extraction in the Mines of Madagascar’
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11:30 – 11:45 am
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Coffee Break
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11:45 – 13:00 pm
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Panel 6: Informal Taxation and Everyday Fiscal Lives
(1 hour 15 min Panel)
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- Vanessa van den Boogaard (University of Toronto) – ‘Informal Contributions and Crisis Responses: Evidence from Rwanda and Sierra Leone’
- Miranda Shield Johansson (University College, London, UK) – ‘Fiscal Impositions and Creative Survival: Money Management Amongst Low Earners in Peri-urban Bolivia’
- Vanessa van den Boogard (University of Toronto and ICTD), Yannick Lokaya Bokasola (International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD)), Gayatri Sahgal (University of Pennsylvania, USA), and Caleb Jérémie Dohou (ICTD) – ‘Beyond the State, but Supporting It? Informal Tax Institutions and State Legitimacy in the DRC’
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13:00 – 15:00 pm
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Lunch
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15:00 – 16:15 pm
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Panel 7: Gender, Resilience, and Reflections
(1 hour 15 min Panel)
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- Camille C. Carr (University of Pennsylvania, USA) – ‘The Politics of Viche: Black Women’s Place-Making and Political Legibility in the Colombian Pacific’
- Rayi Kena Ferraz da Cunha de Souza Teixeira (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) – ‘The “Dirty Mark” of Experience: Heloisa Teixeira’s Critical Response to Cultural Instability in “Impressões de viagem” (1980)’
- Helen Bezuneh (University of Pennsylvania, USA) – ‘“Let Ethiopia March Ahead with Her beauties”: The Making of a Modern Nation at the 1968 Miss Addis Ababa Beauty Contest’
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16:15 – 16:30 pm
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Coffee Break
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16:30 - 18:00 pm
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Panel 8: Art and the Aesthetics of Resilience, Struggle, and Survival
(1.5 Hours)
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- Barbara Alves Matias (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) – ‘Frictions Between Art, Ethics, and Politics: Mujeres Creando and Gender as a Methodological Lens in the Production of Other Worlds’
- Clarke Dickens and Teia Hudson (University of Pennsylvania) – ‘A Changing Landscape: How Urbaside Has Redefined Life Within Salvador, Bahia, Brazil’
- Juliana de Assis Beraldo (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) – ‘“I Make Money with Bananas”: The Uses of Babanas in Paulo Nazarath’s Works’
- Rogers Orock (LSU) – “Who Sing’s the Crisis State? Elite Misrule and the Music Of Disaffection in Cameroon”
- Echezonachukwu Nduka (University of Pennsylvania) – “Musicking through the Timeline: Songs as Resistance and Survival in Postcolonial Nigeria, 1970-2025”
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18:00 – 18:30
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Closing Discussions
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By Professor Wale Adebanwi
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