Materialities of Oral Cultures in East Africa: An Online Symposium, 12 March 2026
Join us for a symposium organised by ALMEDA postdoctoral fellow, Gloria Ajami Makokha, on the ‘Materialities of Oral Cultures in East Africa’.
Street Preaching as Performance
ALMEDA in collaboration with the Centre of African Studies, Copenhagen University invites you to an online workshop on Thursday 4 September at 13:15 – 16:00 (Central European Summer Time).
In this workshop scholars will discuss the implications approaching street preaching as performance and oral literary genre. Viewing publicly delivered sermons as part of the literary and expressive cultures in African contexts entails looking closely at conceptualizations of performance as ever-changing and ephemeral on the one hand, and the idea of the text as ‘fixed’ on the other (Barber, 2005).
This perspective invites reflections on methods of capture of street preaching, whether through participant observation or instances of audio-visual remediatietons, that in turn require a closer look on the materiality and circulation of oratures. Furthermore, it requires a specific focus on the ways religious/literary genres such as street preaching emerge and become embedded in local languages.
Thursday, 4 September 2025
Time: 13:15 – 16:00 (Sweden); 11:15 – 14:00 (Ghana, Nigeria)
Online: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/69550619815
13:15-13:25 – Introductory words
13:30-14:00 – Karen Lauterbach (Center for African Studies, University of Copenhangen ) & Afan Azhang Kazé (University of Jos)
14:00-14:30 – Isaac Boaheng (Christian Service University College, Ghana)
14:30-14:50 – Break
14:50-15:20 – Joseph Oduro Frimpong, Ashesi University
15:20-16:00 – General discussion
16:00 – Closing remarks
