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African Studies Volume 26, Number 2

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African Studies Volume 26, Number 2 Program of NEWS AND EVENTS Winter 2016 African Studies Volume 26, Number 2 PAS welcomes new associate director Meagan Keefe has joined PAS as associate director. Keefe was most recently at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, working on policy reports that focused on nutrition, climate change, and agricultural development. Prior to that, she served as the Ghana country coor- dinator for the International Food Policy Research Institute, manag- ing the country strategy support Hanretta and Stewart join program. She was a Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow based ISITA leadership team at IFPRI, focusing on governance The Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa has issues, the food price crisis, and announced the appointment of associate professor of history, sustainable land and water technologies. Sean Hanretta (above left) as interim director for the 2015–16 Keefe first became interested in international development academic year. when she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, where Hanretta’s scholarship focuses on the cultural, intellectual, she worked with agricultural communities to improve natural and religious history of West Africa. He is the author of Islam and resource management. She holds a BA in economics from St. Olaf Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory College and an MS in natural resource management from the Community (Cambridge 2009) and is completing a manuscript on University of Minnesota. the history of Muslim weddings and funerals in Ghana. ISITA also welcomes Charles Stewart (above right), profes- sor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, as director of programming for 2015–16. A pioneering scholar in the field of Islamic Africa and manuscript studies, Inside Stewart is well known to the ISITA community due to his involve- ment as a visiting scholar since 2008. As project leader on two grants to ISITA from the Ford Foundation, Stewart produced PAStories 2 the final geographical volume in the Arabic Literature of Africa series, The Writings of Mauritania and the Western Sahara, to be ISITA news 6 published this year by Brill. Viewpoint 8 Hanretta, Stewart, and ISITA associate director Rebecca Community news 10 Shereikis will collaborate with colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to implement a series of programs Events calendar 12 on Islam in Africa as part of the Title VI grant to the UIUC- Northwestern Consortium for African Studies, including the April 2016 symposium in honor of John Hunwick (see story on page 6). PAStories Northwestern well represented at annual meeting of Africanists Northwestern scholars presented papers, chaired panels, and participated in roundtables and panel discussions at the 58th African Studies Association meeting in San Diego in November. The conference theme was “The State and the Study of Africa.” Faculty participants included Will Reno (PAS director and political science), who chaired the selection committee Transnational Networks in Eastern Congo”; Marco Bocchese on sovereignties, resistances, and political communities; (political science) presented “State Building by Judicial presented the paper “Military Clientelism and Peacekeeping Means: Rethinking the Relationship between the ICC and in the Horn of Africa”; participated in a roundtable titled State Sovereignty”; and Nathaniel Mathews (history) pre- “The State of the ‘Failed State’ in Africa”; and served as sented “The Changing Idea of Empire in Indian Ocean Africa: discussant on the panel “Insurgencies in Comparative Literature and Popular Memory on Seyyid Said Bin Sultan’s Perspective: African and Cross-Regional Evidence.” Evan ‘Omani Empire’ in East Africa.” Mwangi (English) chaired the selection committee on PAS visiting scholar Sarah Westwood (Boston literature, music, and film. Zachary Wright (Qatar cam- University) chaired the panel “Military Culture and Civil- pus) presented his paper “Jihad of the Pen, Journey of the Military Relations in Precolonial Africa” and presented the Soul.” Sean Hanretta (history) cochaired the panel “From paper “Fighting Locally: Military Culture without a State the West Looking South: Richard L. Roberts and Southern in 19th-Century Busoga (Uganda).” Postdoctoral fellow African History” and presented his paper “The Place of Kathleen Klaus (Buffett Institute for Global Studies) chaired Islam in the Early Historiography of the Gold Coast and the panel “Rethinking Political Mobilization across Africa” Ghana.” Rachel Riedl (political science) copresented the and copresented the paper “Chiefs, Preachers, and ‘Macho- paper “An Individualist Approach to Economic and Political Men’: Strategies of Political Mobilization in Urban Ghana” Development: New Evidence from Churches in Sub-Saharan with Jeffrey W. Paller (Columbia University). In addition, Africa” with Gwyneth McClendon (Harvard University). Klaus won the prize for best graduate paper for “Contentious A number of graduate students also presented papers Land Claims and the Non-Escalation of Violence: Evidence at the meeting. Sally Nuamah (sociology) presented from Kenya’s Coast Region.” “Achievement-Oriented: Developing Positive Academic Other participants included Esmeralda M. Kale (cura- Identities within Female Students at an Urban School in tor, Herskovits Library), who presented “Images of Africa: Ghana,” and Marcos Abreu Leitao de Almeida (history) The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African chaired the panel “Slavery and the Slave Trade: From Africa Photographs,” and Marcia Tiede (Herskovits Library), who to Europe, the Americas, and the Indian Ocean” and pre- presented “Students as Ethnographers in French West sented the paper “Uprooting Living Trees: Enslavement Africa: Two Studies of Mande Childhood (1936) from the in the Lower Congo during the Age of Second Slavery (ca. Cahiers William Ponty.” LaRay Denzer (PAS) chaired the 1811–67).” Mlondolozi Zondi (performance studies) presented panel “West African Women’s Leadership in Sierra Leone “No Rainbow for the Rotten: Dance as a Form of Black Queer and Nigeria: New Biographical Studies” and presented the Activism in Post-1994 South Africa”; Kofi Asante (sociology) paper “Executive Leadership and the Promotion of National presented “Colonial State Formation: A Conceptual Note”; and International Civil Society: The Example of Zainab Moses Khisa (political science) presented “Coalition Politics Bangura of Sierra Leone”; and Amy Settegren (PAS) took part and Institutional Transformation: Ethiopia and Rwanda in in the ASA Teacher Workshop. Comparative Perspective”; Rachel Sweet (political science) presented “Governing Finance: Rebels, Bureaucrats, and 2 koréboy/Creative Commons Visiting scholars to be in residence at PAS Martha Wilfahrt joins PAS and the Department of Political Science from Cornell University, where she completed her PhD in the Department of Government in June 2015. Wilfahrt studies the politi- cal economy of development and state-society relations in West Africa. Her book proj- ect, based on her dissertation, examines the long-term impact of precolonial institutions on the contemporary local politics of public goods delivery in rural Senegal. Other ongoing projects include research on the role of traditional and informal authorities in the 2014–15 Ebola response and a series of papers on central-local trans- fers in decentralized Senegal. Mark DeLancey will spend a year at PAS focusing on two projects. The first is to finish editing a book titled Conquest and Construction: New working group examines Palace Architecture in Northern Cameroon, which will be published Nigerian film industry next year in Brill’s African History series. The second is to begin preliminary research on A working group has been established at PAS to study the manuscripts and calligraphy in Mauritania, which will global phenomenon known as Nollywood—the colloquial investigate manuscripts not just as sources of informa- name for the Nigerian film industry. Nollywood emerged tion, but as objects in their own right with their own in the early 1990s during the harsh economic conditions histories and aesthetic qualities. DeLancey is on leave of structural adjustment in Nigeria, but today it ranks as from DePaul University, where he is associate professor the third most valuable film industry in the world after of history of art and architecture. Hollywood in the United States and Bollywood in India. The industry rests on an amalgam of indigenous cultural Sarah Westwood is a PhD candi- traditions, market literature, traveling theater, and national date in African history at Boston and state television. Initially an outgrowth of Yoruba travel- University, focusing on the military ing theater, Nollywood films are now produced in English, history of West Africa and the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Pidgin, and other local languages. Atlantic World. Her dissertation Led by PAS’s LaRay Denzer and Rebecca Shereikis, the project, “A Question of Allegiance: working group views selected films and reads associated lit- French Military Campaigns erature. Interested faculty and students are welcome to join. in Senegal and the Establishment of the Tirailleur Sénégalais Army, 1750–1910,” provides a new perspective on the conflicts between Senegalese and French forces and the inception and growth of the French colonial force in Senegal, the tirailleurs sénégalais. Westwood is particularly interested in the history of military culture, martial race theory, and the ethics of force. 3 PAStories Panofsky
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