African Studies Cluster @ Wesleyan

About African Studies @ Wes:

Wesleyan University’s African Studies Cluster is devoted to facilitating a deeper understanding and engagement with Africa for the Wesleyan Community and beyond. We bring together a diverse array of courses focusing on Africa, culling the interests of faculty specializing in Africa from a wide variety of disciplines. This broadly interdisciplinary cluster focuses on a large geographic region that is of great historical, cultural, political, and artistic importance and interest to American university students, not to mention American society in general. The cluster promotes interdisciplinary learning in the best of liberal arts traditions.

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Professor Eric Charry, Director of the 2011 Summer Institute for Ethnomusicology and Global Culture

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Aubrey Graham: Beyond the Victim Exhibit

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Alumnus Sarah Bell, Working at the Football for Hope Center, South Africa

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Student Oluwayimika Taiwo-Peters teaching about water and health in Nigeria, Summer 2010

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Professor Mike Nelson at the annual workshop

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Student Nina Sheth speaks at the annual workshop

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Students Haley Baron and Rachel Levenson in Gulu, Uganda 2010

Photos courtesy of Olivia Drake and various students and faculty.

We will be holding an information session for students interested in applying for the Brodigan Award in 2013. This will be held on Friday March 29 in PAC 002. Bring any questions to the meeting or email scroucher@wesleyan.edu if you have any specific queries. Further details of the award can be found at: http://africa.blogs.wesleyan.edu/christopher-brodigan-award-2013/

Below is a short update from Yinka Taiwo-Peters on the work she carried out with the Brodigan Award she received in 2012. Her work is continuing on with a Pioneer Grant from Selfless4Africa for Photopower Nigeria, the continuation of Hope for Gishiri. More details can be found on her blog.

Over the summer, I was able to use the Christopher Brodigan Award (CBA) to implement the Photopower Nigeria project.

Implementation
-Duration: July 31st – August 21st.
-Team: 4 executive officers, 20 volunteers.
-Beneficiaries: 15 orphans from the Hope for Survival Orphanage.
-Activities: 10 workshop days, 1 day of exhibition and auction.

Developments
-Interviewed on daily national morning show.
-Featured on Daily Trust.
-Raised $2000 during auction to get materials for the orphanage.
-Converting Photopower Nigeria to a registered NGO

There is detailed information on the project blog www.photopowernigeria.blogspot.com. It was indeed an interesting experience.

Currently, I am working on how to establish a stable leadership board an identifying a beneficiary institution for next year’s phase of the project.

Yinka Taiwo-Peters

Africultures – Le site des cultures africaines.

Newsletter with events pertaining to Africa and the African diaspora at large (mostly in French, but some in English)

African Feminisms
The African Studies cluster symposium
March 1st, 2013, Allbritton 311

1:30pm: Welcome remarks
1:40pm: Ousseina Alidou, Associate Professor, Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Center for African Studies, Rutgers University. “African Muslim Women’s Agency, Leadership and Contribution to Social Change.”
Followed by ten minutes Q&A

2:30pm: Tsitsi Jaji, Assistant Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, Mary I. Bunting Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2012 – 2013). “Nokutela Dube and Charlotte Manye Maxeke: Towards a Feminist Geneaology of pan-Africanism in South Africa and beyond.”
Followed by ten minutes Q&A

3:15pm: SUYA: Wesleyan Student African Dance Team performance (including spoken introduction)

3: 45pm: Coffee break

4:00pm: Clemantine Wamariya, Yale 2013, board member, US Holocaust Museum
Followed by ten minutes Q&A4:45pm: Discussant comments
4:55pm: Final open discussion

Tags: Africa@Wesleyan

Two great events last Saturday

1. The Wesleyan World Food Fair, which featured Ugali with Sukuma Wiki at the Shofco table.

2. The African Student Association’s Ariya

Saturday night, the African Student Association had their annual cultural celebration. This year it was titled: “Ariya: The Beats of Africa”. One of many highlights from the program was the presentation of their self-made video, “To Be African Like Me”:

At the end of the celebration awards were presented to two very grateful professors, Alice Hadler and Michael Nelson, for their support of the African Student Association.

The African Students Association invites you to Ariya: The Beats of Africa. Saturday 7pm.

Tags: African Student Association, dance, Music

A Reading and Discussion with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
the acclaimed author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Thing Around Your Neck
Thursday, April 5, 2012 4:30pm
Luce Hall Auditorium, 34 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven CT
Free and open to the public

Sponsored by the Council on African Studies, African Languages & Literary Studies theme group
Questions? nathan.suhr-sytsma@yale.edu

Tags: Adichie, events, Yale

Are you interested in gender and feminist issues in Africa? Did you find the nomination of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leyma Gbowee for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 inspiring? If so,  you might be interested in being part of the organizing committee for a spring 2013 symposium on the topic of “African Feminisms.” The African Studies Cluster is looking for students to take part in the process of deciding which speakers to invite, and in the planning and organizing of the symposium itself. This is a great chance to make sure that speakers come to campus to talk about the issues that interest you, and it will also look great on your CV. If you want to get involved, or have any questions, email Prof Sarah Croucher (scroucher@wesleyan.edu).

Tags: African Feminisms

African Studies Chair Mike Nelson commented on the event on his blog:

“WES-FID: Some Thoughts”

“WES-FID: Commenting on SHOFCO”

Overall, the event was a huge success. The student organizers (both Africanists, of course!) had hoped for 60 students but ended up with more than 130! Plans are in the works to do another repeat conference.

So, congratulations to the organizers and participants on a fantastic event!