Dr. Clemence Pinaud, Assistant Professor of International Studies and ASP Faculty Affiliate has published her book, War and Genocide in South Sudan. The book is based on more than a decade of fieldwork in South Sudan and explores “the relationship between predatory wealth accumulation, state formation, and a form of racism-extreme ethnic group entitlement that has the potential to result in genocide.”
The ASP wishes to offer its congratulations to Dr. Margaret S. Graves, Associate Professor of Art History and ASP Affiliate Faculty, who has won the 2021 Karen Gould Prize in Art History for her book, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam. This prestigious annual award is given to a book or monograph that is judged to be of outstanding quality, selected by the Medieval Academy of America.
Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History, CRRES Associate Director, and ASP faculty affiliate, Dr. Michelle Moyd, is a recipient of the IU Building Bridges Award. The award is given annually during celebrations of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Even during a pandemic, K-8 teachers gathered virtually to explore how today’s challenges affect everyone during an institute on sustainable development this fall.
Former anti-apartheid and anti-colonial activist, educator, scholar and Presidential Fellow in Peace Studies at Chapman University, Dr. Rozell "Prexy" Nesbitt, will speak at the IU ASP event, Transnational Solidarities: Black Lives Matter & Human Rights Movements in Africa.
Through a focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, participants will learn how today’s pressing global challenges are experienced in local communities around the world. Teachers will build knowledge and skills to infuse their classrooms with global content and perspectives, fostering student-led, project-based, solutions driven, standards-aligned teaching and learning. For more information and to register, visit http://bit.ly/IU-Workshop or email Vesna Dimitrieska at Vdimitri@indiana.edu
ASP is offering the IU Swahili Program virtually this summer. The non-cost program is open to interested Middle and High School Students. Please contact Tavy Aherne (taherne@indiana.edu) for more details.
Join us for a virtual ASP Spring Student Awards Ceremony, where we will recognize our Summer FLAS fellows, our volunteers, the graduating senior of the year, and recognize this year’s Hodge winner! See our Events page or the Friday Events Bulletin for further details and zoom link.
For the safety of our students and faculty, we regret to announce that we will be cancelling our spring African Languages Festival. We will miss seeing all of our students’ growth in their languages and the showcasing of their talents. We hope to be back together again next year.
This year’s Graduate Students in African Studies (GSAS) Annual Symposium will be in April. The theme is “African Space and Mind: Progress and Challenges in the 21st Century.” For more information, please contact Samantha Hyde (samhyde@iu.edu).
On November 22, former associate director of the IU African Studies Program, Maria Grosz-Ngaté, delivered the 2019 ASA Presidential Lecture “Knowledge and Power: Perspectives on the Production and Decolonization of African/ist Knowledges” at the annual African Studies Association meeting in Boston.
At the 62nd Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Boston, John Hanson, director of the IU African Studies Program and Professor of History, received the 2019 ASA Service Award. He accepted the award together with his colleagues Jan Jansen (Leiden University), Dmitri van den Bersselaar (University of Leipzig), and Michael Doortmont (Leiden University).
Indiana University’s African Studies Program is a “preferred partner” in a network of universities in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, South America, and the United States associated with the University of Bayreuth’s seven-year Cluster of Excellence grant from the German Federal Government, awarded in 2019.
This fall, a two-day workshop was held focused on the work and legacy of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. The workshop was organized by Vincent Bouchard (Associate Professor, French and Italian; African Studies affiliate faculty) and Terri Frances (Director, Black Film Center/Archive) with support from numerous entities at IU.
The African Studies Program co-organized a workshop on the topic, “Religious Authority in Muslim Africa: Fragmentation and Plurality,” at the Indiana University European Gateway in Berlin from October 10-12, 2019. The initiative was led by John Hanson(African Studies Program) and Ron Sela (Islamic Studies Program), joined by Rüdiger Seesemann (University of Bayreuth) and Terje Østebø and Ben Soares (University of Florida).
The ASP is pleased to welcome our new MA students: Trevor Phipps, Ibrahim Odugbemi, Barakaeli Mbise, and Samantha Hyde (not shown)!
Karibu –welcome- to Twalha Kassaisa, African Studies Program’s 2019-2020 Swahili Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant!
The African Studies Program, the Wright School of Education’s P-16 Center, and several other HLS areas studies centers recently hosted the 2019 HLS Summer Institute.
The African Studies Program congratulates this year’s cohort for the STARTALK Swahili summer language program!
Thank you to Jeffrey Holdeman (Senior Lecturer, Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures; Director of the Global Living-Learning Center) who recently donated six beautifully embroidered men’s hats of West African origin. These will enrich the offerings of our ASP Outreach Lending Collection.
Thank you to Jeanne Sept (Professor Emeritus, Anthropology) who donated numerous objects from her years of research on the African continent to our ASP Outreach Lending Collection. Among the objects are textiles and clothing from West and East Africa; Kenyan objects of adornment, children’s toys. incense pots, hair combs, earth pigments, and even a giant ostrich egg! We have already begun utilizing the objects in our outreach to K-12 classrooms.
Congratulations to this year’s Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) academic year fellows: Issac Agbetuyi (Yoruba); Erin Anderson (Arabic); Fashola Ayo-Igbala (Yoruba); Maggie FitzGerald (Zulu); Meghan Halaburda (Swahili); Marina Mecham (Zulu);Trevor Phipps (Kinyarwanda); Sydney Pleak (Zulu); Macy Richardson (Swahili); and, Caitlyn Wishmeyer (Swahili).
The 2019 ASP Pedagogy Awards were presented to Foluso Mary Okiebiorum, Victor Alabi, and Richard Nyamahanga. The award supports the conference participation to present research and undertake training at language pedagogy conferences.
This year’s Patrick O’Meara Travel Awards, in support of presentations at professional conferences, go to: Taiwo Ehinini (linguistics), Khalid Essassiah (History), and Sylvester Matete Makobi (Music in Literature & Performance). Congratulations, all!
Congratulations to this year’s ASP Carlton T. Hodge Prize winner, Sylvester Matete Makobi (ASP PhD Minor & PhD Candidate, Jacobs School of Music)! We thank Sylvester for his outstanding commitment to African Studies.
Bloomington area school-aged children in grades K-6 will be able to learn introductory KiSwahili through the award winning after-school program Bridges: Children, Languages, World.
Congratulations to Jenny Parker on her appointment as Director of the West Africa Research Association! Jenny is also completing an African Studies Program minor as a Ph.D. candidate in the IU Department of Anthropology. We wish her the best on her new endeavor in Boston, Massachusetts!
IU ASP alumna Dr. Joanna Grabski (Art History) was nominated for the African Studies Association 2018 Herskovits Prize for her book, Art World City: The Creative Economy of Artists and Urban Life in Dakar (Indiana University Press). The annual award is for the best scholarly work on Africa, published in English, during the previous year.
IU alumna Kathleen Bickford Berzock (Ph.D., Art History) will curate an exciting new exhibition at the Northwestern University Block Museum of Art: Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa. The exhibition runs January 26, 2019, through July 21, 2019.
The African Studies Program is excited to be included among eleven international centers and programs in the IU School of Global and International Studies to receive Title VI funding. This is a record number of SGIS centers to receive funding totaling $18.8 million.
Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies