Anxiety in and about Africa (360G-Wellcome-202684_Z_16_Z)

We are applying for funding to support the travel of three speakers from the African continent. They will participate in a two-day interdisciplinary conference that examines the uses and meanings of the term ‘anxiety’ as it relates to Africa. The speakers will participate in a roundtable on the 'Vocabularies of Anxiety', which will explore how the languages with which we speak about Africa construct the continent as a site of anxiety. It will look at the importance of emotions like anxiousness in scholarly attempts to understand social, cultural, and political lives in Africa, and consider the dangers of employing a medical term as a heuristic device. Each speaker will bring a unique perspective on anxiety: personal anxieties about illness; psychiatric approaches to anxiety; and political anxieties about sexuality. By bringing together a range of research examining the various stimuli that may generate responses like anxiety we hope to invigorate an area of study that is still under-developed in the literature on Africa. Funding from the Trust will assist in bringing psychiatric and medical humanities perspectives to the fore, and ensure that African scholars are well represented.