Call for Papers: Colonial Spatiality in African Sahara Regions. Lisbon, 16-18 January 2019
Chaired by Dr Samia Henni, Cornell University
International Congress “Colonial and Postcolonial Landscapes: Architecture, Cities, Infrastructures”, Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
This session investigates the ways with which European colonial regimes have shaped the design of African Saharan aboveground and underground territories, cities, villages, infrastructures, and societies over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. These Saharan regions comprise Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. Colonized by different European countries—including Britain, Italy, France, and Spain—these climatically challenging territories served primarily to search, extract, and transport the desert’s multiple natural resources and assets. Yet, in what exactly consisted these designs? What were their impact on Saharan nomadic, sedentary societies and environments? And to what extend did these colonial territorial transformations affect the socio-economic future of the African countries in question?
This session aims at addressing these questions and exploring the relationship between spatial planning, architecture, environment, and European colonial practices in African Saharan regions. The session welcomes papers that critically analyze the involvement of European colonial civil servants, military officers, engineers, planners, and architects in shaping the design of one or more African Saharan regions. Of special interest are papers that disclose how particular projects or built environments had obeyed or disobeyed to Saharan or trans-Saharan colonial directives, and expose the multifaceted effects of such programs at national, transnational and international levels. This session welcomes papers that propose original methods for analyzing Saharan or trans-Saharan colonial spatiality in historical, political, economic, climatic and environmental terms.
Abstracts submission deadline: 30 June 2018.
Abstracts can be submitted via the following link https://www.colonialandpostcoloniallandscapes.com/