Sample Panel Themes for the 2015 Conference include but are not limited to:

  • African Diaspora Studies: Theories, Trends, Ideas
  • Biodiversity in the Transatlantic African Diaspora: Genetics and Epigenetics
  • Diaspora Links to the Gullah Language
  • Race, Nation, and the African Diaspora in Europe
  • Divergent framings of “Blackness” in Africa and the Diaspora
  • Islam and the Articulation of African Diaspora Identities
  • Gullah versus Geechee: Origin, Meaning and the Names Controversy
  • Impact of New Media on African & African Diaspora Communities Professionals
  • African American subgroups (microethnic groups) in the Carolinas and the Americas
  • Stuart Hall and the British Cultural Studies Movement
  • Flash of the Spirit: BaKongo Culture in South Carolina and Beyond
  • African Heritage of Gullah Musical Traditions
  • Indian Ocean Communities of African Descent
  • “Blackness” and Identity in Oceania
  • Performing Diaspora: Possession, Ecstatic Dance and the Ring Shout
  • Trafficking of African Women and Girls to Europe
  • Lorenzo Turner: Mapping Linguistic Patterns from Africa to America
  • Sulfur, Signs and Conjuration: Talking to the Spirits
  • The Penn School Experiment
  • Folklore, Folk Life and Folk Religion: Sierra Leone/Liberian Connections
  • Charting Black Rice in the Diaspora: Food ways and Food wise
  • African Ancestry and Health Disparities in the Carolina Coast and Beyond
  • North African and Sahel Societies and the Idea of Africa
  • Aesthetic colonization and Artistic Gaze: White Literary Representations of Gullah Life
  • Immigration, Human Rights and Spaces of Internment in Africa and the African Diaspora
  • African Diaspora Literary Engagements with Africa
  • Global Hip Hop Nations and Resistances
  • Frogmore, St. Helena Island: A Legacy for Reparations
  • Technology in African & African Diaspora Communities
  • Religion: African and African-Descendant Productions and Responses
  • African Diaspora in Asia
  • Woman for All Seasons: Septima Poinsette Clark, Civil Rights and Citizenship Schools
  • Internal and Regional Diasporas within Continental Africa
  • Bearers of Culture: Gullah Women in works of Julia Peterkin, Gloria Naylor and Julie Dash
  • Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex (LGBTI) Communities, Movements, and Identity in Africa and the African Diaspora