The Department of African American Studies in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Communication, College of Fine Arts, the Communication and Development Studies Program, and the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University announces the conference "Entertainment-Education and the Global African Experience" scheduled for April 15 -17, 2004, at Ohio University, Athens. The main objective of the conference is to explore the entertainment-education practices from around global Africa. The term global Africa refers to continental Africa and its Diaspora, especially the diaspora in the Americas.

Background: Entertainment-Education (EE) is a strategic communication intervention that uses popular entertainment vehicles to deliver pro-social, educational messages. For the past two decades the strategy has attracted much attention among strategic communicators in the international donor community. The strategy has been used extensively in the developing world to address issues as varied as domestic violence, HIV/AIDS prevention, and the rights of the girl child. It has also supported initiatives in environmental education, peace and conflict resolution, tourism, and the diffusion of agricultural innovations.

A study conducted in 2000 by researchers at Ohio University revealed that a significant number of entertainment-education interventions funded by the international community were being executed in global Africacontinental Africa and its diaspora in the Americas. The majority of these interventions appeared to be radio and television soap operas. Other interventions included music videos, popular music, and rock concerts. This emphasis could suggest that other forms of entertainment-interventions might be ineffective. Such a conclusion cannot be drawn, however, as there is limited evidence that the strategic communicators affiliated with the donor community have explored indigenous entertainment vehicles that could be used to complement and extend the entertainment-education strategy.

Global Africa faces many pressing social, economic, and political problems, including the HIV/AIDS pandemic and political turmoil. It is imperative that the international community spend some time identifying those indigenous entertainment-education strategies that could complement and extend interventions aimed at improving the quality of human life in global Africa.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Hollywood and Health Initiative recently organized a conference to develop a research agenda related to the use of entertainment-education for African American and Hispanic communities in the United States. It is clear that African Americans and Hispanics consume and interpret mass media products in ways that are different from white audiences. Many of the assumptions underlying mainstream program production in the United States are exported by the mass media oriented entertainment-education interventions being delivered in Global Africa. The unintended consequences of this reality require examination.

The conference aims to:

• identify and discuss the entertainment-education strategies developed and used by global African people.
• explore the applications of traditional practices to the contemporary challenges facing global African communities.
• explore how these strategies can complement and extend contemporary mass media-delivered entertainment-education practices.
• consider the ethical issues surrounding the linking of education and entertainment.
• identify and develop a research agenda that will complement and extend that being developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Hollywood, Health and Society project at the Norman Lear Center, University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication to address the public health and related challenges facing African American and Hispanic communities in the United States.
• encourage participation in the Fourth International Conference on Entertainment-Education and Social Change scheduled for Cape Town, South Africa in September 2004.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and panel proposals to Dr. Vibert C. Cambridge, Chair, Entertainment-Education and Global Africa Conference Planning Committee, Department of African American Studies, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701 by January 31, 2004.

Ohio University was the host of the Second International Conference on Entertainment-Education and Social Change in 1997 and participated in planning the Third International Conference on Entertainment-Education and Social Change held in Amsterdam in 2000. Ohio University is also a member of the planning team for the Fourth International Conference on Entertainment-Education and Social Change scheduled for Cape Town, South Africa in September 2004.