Today (8th September) we are launching an important report on shack fires. We asked for this report to be written and we worked closely with the writer at all stages. We are releasing the report today so that it can be widely discussed in the lead up to the City Wide Shack Fire Summit called by the movement for Monday 22 September 2008. We will launch the isiZulu version of the report soon. We call on all organisations that are concerned with justice and that want a city in which everyone is safe to read and discuss the report.

35th Annual Conference
April 15-19, 2009
University of Vermont

Second call for panels, roundtables, and papers

General Theme: Africa and Blackness in World Literature and Visual Arts

The past two ALA conferences focused on various ways African and African Diaspora literature has functioned as a cultural catalyst that nurtures black people's subjectivity in the age of globalization. As a conclusion to the series, the 35th Annual ALA Conference will focus on the ways creative writers and artists from other cultural traditions imagined Africa and blackness in the past as well as the extent to which that imagining has evolved and can be said to foster intersubjective dialogue in the age of globalization. As always, the conference will also welcome panels on other unexplored or inadequately explored aspects of African and African Diaspora literature.