THE PROGRAM OF AFRICAN STUDIES 2013-2014 Annual Report TABLE OF CONTENTS PROGRAM OF LEADERSHIP Director 2 AFRICAN STUDIES PAS Executive Committee 3 2013-14 Annual Report RESEARCH Working Groups 4 ISITA 6 Young African Leadership Initiative 8 ACADEMICS Graduate and Undergrad Programs 12 Visiting Scholars 14 COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND SUPPORT Panofsky Awards 16 Awards and Funding 17 Language Awards 18 Partnerships 19 Events 2013-2014 20 LEADERSHIP LEADERSHIP African Leaders over five years. The twenty five fellows in the first Throughout the 2013-2014 academic year, the contingent joined us over the summer to participate in the Business PAS Executive committee oversaw the overall and Entrepreneurship Institute organized with the Farley Center for intellectual direction of PAS and its programs. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Center for Leadership. After a committee was made up of the following affiliated busy six weeks of classes, site visits to major business in Chicago and faculty: community service experiences, the fellows continued on to Washington, DC for President Obama’s Summit for Young African Leaders. Evan Mwangi (English) William Reno (Political Science) PAS was also proud to collaborate with the University of Illinois, Rachel Riedl (Political Science) Urbana-Champaign’s Institute for African Studies on a Department of Jeff Rice (History and WCAS Advisor) Education funded Title VI area studies grant. This grant will support Ivy Wilson (American Studies) research, language instruction, and outreach over three years Our Rebecca Shereikis, ISITA general activities of the year, events, Afrisem, and new events such as Noelle Sullivan, Global Health Studies the Global Health Case Competition were huge successes and we thank Program Will Reno, Director of African Studies (left) after you all for your participation. Please look out for the fall quarter PAS Helen Tilley, History his talk “The Changing Character of Conflicts in newsletter, with highlights of the exciting activities at PAS. As we move Africa” at Northeastern Illinois University. into the new year, I look forward to meeting new Africanists and seeing familiar faces as we continue our commitment of the University and The Program of African Studies his improved its capacity to offer its academic departments to provide resources, events and programs lectures, secure and provide funding for students and faculty, and dedicated to the study of all things Africa. cosponsor exciting events with other departments in the Northwestern community and beyond. This year the Department of State awarded - Will Reno Director of the Program of African Studies PAS a grant to host the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young Institute on Contemporary Africa, Northwestern University, 1951 2 3 RESEARCH RESEARCH PAS’ Working Groups Award is a source of support for faculty and (ADF). Members of the group will meet on a regular basis to reflect graduate student collaborative research. The award funds interdisciplin- Access to Health and Human Rights in Mali Working Group on advances and setbacks to democracy in Africa, comparing experi- ary groups who work to address research issues in African Studies. PAS ences in the continent with those in other world regions. The working believes that working groups promote community building between The Northwestern Access to Health Project, an interdisciplinary group can evolve, in stages, to become a Colloquium on Democracy scholars working on problems of common interest. The maximum working group of law, medical and Kellogg faculty and students, in Africa which can serve the following purposes: provide guidance to award per group is $5,000. In the AY 13-14, PAS awarded three groups. has partnered with the town of Douentza, in northeastern Mali, to students, graduate and undergraduate, before and after field research Groups are encouraged to use part of their time and funds towards conduct a health and human rights needs assessment and to identify in Africa; connect faculty and students to an international network of pursuit of external grant funding. Below are descriptions of AY 13-14 sustainable, capacity-building projects and interventions consistent democracy scholars and analysts; promote student research projects working groups: with that assessment. Following the assessment and fieldwork in using the Herskovits Library and other resources; establish links with early 2014, members of the working group will return to Douentza in research and policy institutes for faculty and students; and create op- Oral History in Africa Working Group September 2014 to launch projects related to female genital mutila- portunities, via the ADF, for faculty and students to publish essays and tion/cutting, health education through music, and the Millenium De- commentaries for a global readership. This working group conducted interviews with artists from South velopment Goals. The director of the local radio stations and a local Africa and Zimbabwe whose work deals with both countries’ shifts to women’s leader, both members of the community advisory board for independence and the developments in their relationship throughout and the project, will serve as project managers. Members of the North- after that process. With this research, they’ll contribute to the many con- western working group will again return to Douentza to monitor and versations happening about the role of art in resisting colonialism and the evaluate the projects in March 2015. less examined role of art in mediating the complex relationship between Zimbabwe and South Africa. In 2014, this working group will stage a Democracy and Governance Working Group week long installation compiled of the interviews and selections/recre- ations of each artist’s work, expanding the Oral History and Performance An interdisciplinary working group of faculty and students will as Social Action archive at the Program of African Studies. be created to discuss and conduct research on democracy in Africa. A community of scholars will be developed at Northwestern in parallel At the States, Society and Development conference, fall 2012. with an online community emerging via the Africa Demos Forum 4 5 RESEARCH RESEARCH The Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) con- not as isolated objects but as parts of collections with histories of tinues to be a vital component of PAS, supporting new research on Islam ownership, usage, dispersion, and reassembly. in Africa through its publications, on and off-campus programming, and visiting scholars. Weijian Li of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was a visiting scholar with ISITA during AY 2013-14, planning, researching, and In fall 2013 ISITA published “A Handbook on Mali’s 2012-13 writing the first Chinese-language monograph of Islam in Africa, and Crisis” as part of its working paper series through the Buffett Center for presenting his work at both PAS and the Buffett Center. ISITA also International and Comparative Studies. Authored by Alexander Thur- hosted the visit of Nigerian manuscript expert Amidu Olalekan Sanni ston and Andrew Lebovich, the handbook provides resources that help of Lagos State University, who consulted the Herskovits Library’s contextualize Mali’s intersecting crises in 2012-13. ISITA continued its collection of Arabic manuscripts from West Africa and met with the collaboration with Northwestern University Press to produce two new Library’s preservation department to discuss their research into the issues of the online journal Islamic Africa. One of the highlights of the collection’s paper and ink. fall 2013 issue was Rudolph Ware’s annotated translation (from Arabic to English) of a praise poem by one of West Africa’s most famous Sufi shaykhs, Amadu Bamba. The translation was produced as part of the Ford Foundation’s “Constituting Bodies of Islamic Knowledge” grant to ISITA and will form part of a larger English-language anthology of the writings of Senegambian Sufi scholars (forthcoming 2015). An ISITA-sponsored round-table on “The Islamic Archive of Africa” at the African Studies Association’s November 2013 meeting in Baltimore sparked lively discussion on the multiple meanings of Islamic manu- Weijian Li ,Visiting ISITA scholar in front of the script collections in Africa and stressed the need to view manuscripts Program of African Studies 6 7 Young African Young African Leadership Initiative Leadership Initiative This past summer, Northwestern University had the honor of hosting League and Chicago Gospel Run, on the west side with Carole Robinson 25 of Sub-Saharan Africa’s brightest and most influential young people Center for Learning, and on the north side with Inspiration Corporation, for the Mandela Washington Fellowship—the flagship program of Refugee One, Pan-African Association, and Youth Organization Um- President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative. In partnership brella. They also met Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and State Sena- with the Department of State and their implementing partner, the tor Daniel Biss who fielded their many questions pertaining to American International Research and Exchanges Board, PAS, the Farley Center politics and how to navigate the political sphere. for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Center for Leadership operated a six-week Business and Entrepreneurship Institute that taught There were activities that highlighted Chicago’s cultural richness: the executive-level business knowledge. Art Institute Chicago, an architectural boat tour, Fourth of July festivities