Wednesday Seminar Guest Speakers
Seminars are offered on a different topic each semester. They are also our primary venue for presentations by national and international scholars. Since the seminar is usually offered on Wednesdays, the guest speakers are known as the Wednesday Seminar Speakers. These lectures are open to the wider African Studies community and the public.
Spring 2013 | Fall 2012 | Spring 2012 | Fall 2011 | Spring 2011 | Fall 2010 | Spring 2010
Spring 2013
Woodburn Hall 221, 5:30pm - 7:30pm (unless otherwise noted)
Pre-lecture refreshments at 4:45pm in Woodburn Hall 221 (regardless of seminar location)
| 20 February Woodburn 009 |
Rising to the Concrete: Critical Ethnographic Practice in West Africa |
Jean Lave, University of California-Berkeley |
| 20 March Auditorium A152* |
Bakhtin and Beyond, Senegal and Beyond |
Judith Irvine, University of Michigan |
| 18 April | 'After Work': Precarity and Contingency in Post-Transition South Africa |
Anne-Maria Makhulu, Duke University |
*Enter the Auditorium from the small south parking lot (Theatre Department entrance)
Fall 2012
Theme: African Histories of Technology
Dr. Marissa Moorman, History
Woodburn Hall 218, 5:30pm
| 17 October | “Regarding ‘Engineering,’ ‘Technology,’ ‘Designers’ and ‘Users’ as Seen through Chimurenga, Zimbabwe’s Liberation War” |
Clapperton Mavhungu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 7 November | "Oil Rich Niger Delta" |
George Osodi, Independent Photographer, Lagos, Nigeria |
| 14 November | “’Oilpacity’ as the Source of the Oil Curse? A Discussion of its Manifestations in the African Context, 1939-1971” |
Kairn Klieman, University of Houston |
| 5 December | “Cultural Creativity as Technology: Mobile Telephony, Innovation and Shifts in African Associational Life” | Joyce Nyairo, Independent Researcher, Nairobi, Kenya |
Spring 2012
| 1 February | Hymns, Historical Agency and the Materialization of Spiritual Power in the Cherubim and Seraphim Church | Vicki Brennan, University of Vermont |
| 29 February | Creating Community through the Book Arts: Art, Craft and Environmental Conservation in the Greater Ashanti Region of Ghana | Mary Hark, University of Wisconsin |
| 7 March | Techniques of Inattention: The Mediality of Loudspeakers in Nigeria | Brian Larkin, Barnard College |
| 11 April | Disgrace and the importance of laughing at JM Coetzee | Stacy Hardy, Chimurenga Magazine, Cape Town, South Africa |
Fall 2011
| 28 September | Cultic Revelries in the Egyptian New Kingdom | Prof. Betsy Bryan, Johns Hopkins University |
| 28 September | As for Those Who have Called me Evil, Mut will Call them Evil!’ A New Praise of the Goddess Mut on a Roman Period Papyrus in Florence | Prof. Richard Jasnow, Johns Hopkins University |
| 26 October | Nubians and the Cult of Isis in Late-Roman Egypt | Prof. Solange Bumbaugh, University of Chicago |
Spring 2011
| 2 February | The Future of Food: African Sustainable Agriculture | Prof. Carol Thompson, Northern Arizona University, Political Science. |
| 23 February | The Moral Economy of the Military: Structural Adjustment, Babangida, and Rice in 1980s Nigeria. | Prof. Steven Pierce, University of Manchester (UK), History |
| 2 March | Peanuts, Rice, Prophets, and Resistance in Colonial Senegal | Prof. Robert Baum, University of Missouri, Columbia, Religious Studies |
| 13 April | Grounding Morality: Rural Farmers and Social Movements in Cameroon | Prof. Susan Diduk, Denison University, Ohio, Anthropology |
Fall 2010
| 22 September | Corruption as a Threat to Democratic Consolidation and Regime Legitimacy in Africa | John Mbaku, Weber State University |
| 13 October | Governance in the Post-Conflict Democratic Republic of Congo: Constraints and Opportunities | Georges Nzongola, UNC Chapel Hill |
| 27 October | Sustainable Development in Africa | Okechukwu Ukaga, University of Minnesota-Cloquet |
| 10 November | The Role of Foreign Actors in African Conflicts and Violence against Women and Children | Keith Hermon Snow, War Correspondent, Photojournalist, and Human Rights Investigator |
| 1 December | Literacy and Women's Participation in Development in Nigeria | Una Osili, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis |
| 15 December | Speaking the Unspeakable: Mitigating Cross-Cultural Miscommunication through Understanding Communication Strategies in African Society: the Case of the AFRICOM “Request” | Samuel Obeng, Director African Studies Program, Indiana University Bloomington Campus |
Spring 2010
| 24 February | Sembene: A Disalienated Modernity | Akinwumi Adesokan, Department of Comparative Literature, Indiana University |
| 24 March | Music and the (Post-) Post-Colony: Stories from Tanzania and Rwanda | Gregory Barz, Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University |
| 31 March | (Performance) | Cosmas Magaya Master Performer, Mbira, Zimbabwe |
| 7 April | The Political Economy of the Archive and the Geo/Politics of Literary Culture in Africa | Olabode Ibironke, Department of English, Johns Hopkins University |
| 14 April | Power Moves: Colonial Military Culture and Physical Expression in German East Africa | Michelle Moyd, Department of History, Indiana University |
| 21 April | The Right to Copy: Imitation and Creativity in Tanzanian Musical Compositions | Alex Perullo, Department of Anthropology, Bryant University |
