African Studies
Convenors:
Stephan Miescher, History, at ext. 7676 or e-mail miescher@history.ucsb.edu
Sylvester O. Ogbechie, History of Art and Architecture,
at ext. 5619, ogbechie@arthistory.ucsb.edu
Peter Bloom, Film Studies, at ext. 8943, pbloom@filmstudies.ucsb.edu
Statement of Purpose
The IHC African Studies Research Focus is a interdisciplinary
group of UCSB faculty and graduate students with diverse
research interests in African studies. Established in
1998, the group has been active in bringing several
guest speakers to campus, including in 2006 the distinguished
historian Toyin Falola (University of Texas), in 2005
the renowned anthropologist and historian David William
Cohen (University of Michigan), in 2004 the internationally
acclaimed, multiple award-winning writer, Chris Abani,
and in 2003, the well received visit by Okwui Enwezor,
Artistic Director Documenta XI. In 2001, the group organized
the successful international conference, "Africa
After Gender? An Exploration of New Epistemologies for
African Studies," which was sponsored by the UC
Humanities Research Institute, and the UCSB Interdisciplinary
Humanities Center. Several of the papers, originally
presented at the conference, will be published in a
collection Africa After Gender? (edited by Catherine
Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan Miescher), by Indiana
University Press in Fall 2006. The group meets approximately
two to three times a quarter to share ongoing research
interests in African studies and to discuss relevant
readings that engage with theories, epistemologies,
and practices of African studies. Once a year, the group
hosts an outside speaker addressing an issue relevant
to the group's discussion.
Description of Proposed Activities
May Conference
Projected Theme for 2006-2007: Cultures of Corruption
in Africa and “the West”
Following the visit of Toyin Falola this year, and
in our subsequent conversations, we have been led to
think about the underpinnings of “corruption”
as political framework for understanding the relationship
between Africa and the bureaucratic infrastructure of
the "West." A kernel of the discussion relates
to the question of whether the West has been uniquely
successful in compartmentalizing corruption and privatizing
it in such a way that it comes to be understood as not
merely acceptable but rather congruent with bureaucratic
practices of institution-building that exist on the
same horizon as the rhetoric of structural adjustment.
We are interested in addressing “cultures of corruption”
in Africa in order to ask how political corruption in
Africa may be understood as dysfunctional because of
the way they are articulated in relation to external
bureaucratic structures of power. It is these external
structures that maintain the rhetorical franchise of
rights, democracy, and representational politics. Instead,
the RFG will address how the democratic impulse may
be grounded in kinship networks on behalf of or against
the state when the basis of the nation-state itself
is lodged within post-colonial practices of “retribalization”
and methods of plunder integral to the world system.
It is our hope that this theme engages with the work
of scholars such as Michael Haardt, Toni Negri, Achille
Mbembe, Giorgio Agamben, among others that might allow
us to examine representations of Africa in “the
West,”and “the West” in Africa, as
an underlying political and economic equation, while
incorporating detailed ethnographic studies in various
regions of the continent.
Potential Presentations for the coming year:
From this point of departure we hope to invite Achille
Mbembe (Research Professor in History and Politics,
Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg),
who will be scholar in residence at UC-Irvine during
the Fall Quarter of 2006, and will be developing a series
of readings in preparation for the development of this
theme. We will also seek to collaborate with other units
on campus to invite scholars addressing themes of political
corruption, bureaucracy, and the rhetoric of rights
in the international system with an interest in developing
this theme further as part of a conference. In addition,
we are planning to invite Andrew Apter, Professor of
History and Director of the Master’s Degree Program
in African Studies at UCLA. As in years past, we will
continue to provide a forum for faculty and students
who have been involved in the RFG to present their ongoing
work. Bianca Murillo, a graduate student in History
will present her dissertation prospectus to the group
during the fall, and Tim Mechlinski, a graduate student
in Sociology will present the results of his doctoral
research on migration in West Africa that he has been
undertaking during the academic year of 2005-06. Various
faculty members have also expressed interest in presenting
their work. This will also include the ongoing development
of the Nollywood Film Convention spearheaded by Sylvester
Ogbechie that has contributed our work over the past
year.
Participants
Convenors:
Peter Bloom (Assistant Professor, Film Studies), Fall
Stephan F. Miescher (Associate Professor, History)
Sylvester O. Ogbechie (Assistant Professor, History
of Art and Architecture)
Evelyn Abe (honors student)
Jude Akunobi, Black Studies (Lecturer)
Kwame Braun, Film Studies (Lecturer)
Elizabeth Brenner, Education (Associate Professor)
Ellen Caldwell, History of Art and Architecture (graduate
student)
Lane Clark, Independent Artist, Santa Barbara
Catherine M. Cole, Dramatic Art (Associate Professor)
Herbert M. Cole, History of Art and Architecture (Professor
Emeritus)
Sylvia Curtis, Library (staff)
Christi Dietrich, Religious Studies (graduate student)
Anna Everett, Film Studies (Professor)
Nancy Gallagher, History (Professor)
Annette Harrison, Linguistics (graduate student)
Karen Liu, Music (graduate student)
Tim Mechlinski, Sociology (graduate student)
Bianca Murillo, History (graduate student)
Barbara Nussbaum, Independent Scholar, Santa Barbara
Cathy Oliverson, Arts & Lectures (staff)
Eric Prieto, French & Italian (Associate Professor)
Torsten Sannar, Dramatic Art (graduate student)
Stuart T. Smith, Anthropology (Associate Professor)
Roberto Strongman, Black Studies (Assistant Professor)
Tentative Schedule
List of Events, 2005-2006
Fall 2005
Date and Time: Friday, October 28th, 11:00- 12:30 pm
Location: IHC Seminar Room, 6056 HSSB
Sponsors: The African Studies Research Focus Group and
the Department of Film Studies
Title of Presentation: Tupi or not tupi: "Natural"
man and the Ideology of French Colonial Documentary
Cinema
Presenter: Peter J. Bloom, Assistant Professor of Film
Studies at UCSB
Brief Description:
Eighteenth century conceptions of "natural man"
in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality initiated a shifting anthropological figure
that is transformed into the terms of geographic and
racial difference by the end of the nineteenth century.
I examine how anthropological and physiological discourses
of difference in France conspired to remake the colonial
subject as a site of hygienic reform through the development
of chronophotography (serial motion photography) and
French colonial cinema during the interwar period. The
materialization of the colonial subject as a photographic
representation served as a foundation for the project
of humanitarian colonial reform in the name of evolutionary
difference. Through an exploration of various chronophotographic
demonstrations and French colonial films, I examine
the implications and historical context for the anthropophagic
proposition launched by the Brazilian Surrealists, "tupi
or not tupi," as the critical rethinking of the
exotic trope.
Date: Wednesday, November 30th
Time: from 5:30 to 7:00 pm
Location: IHC Seminar Room, 6056 HSSB
Title of Presentation: “Sound in the City: Exploring
the Urban Geography of Post-Apartheid Sound”
Presenter: Xavier Oneal Livermon, Visiting scholar in
Black Studies from UC-Berkeley
Abstract: Discussion of Kyaito South African Hip hop
and the role of inter-diasporal musical mixing in which
the speaker examines the relationship between the post-Apartheid
body in the space of Township culture.
Winter 2006
Date: Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
Time: from 5:00 to 7:00 pm
Location: IHC Seminar Room, 6056 HSSB
Title of Presentation: “Akosombo Stories and the
Dam Nation of Ghana”
Stephan Miescher is Associate Professor of History
at UCSB and lead convener of the African Studies RFG.
He has also most recently published Making Men in Ghana
with Indiana University Press.
[Abstract]
The name Akosombo has multiple meanings in Ghana. Akosombo
refers to a large dam, measuring 700 meters long and
134 meters high, and completed in 1966 as part of the
Volta River Project. Akosombo stands for the hydroelectric
power generated by the dam under the auspices of the
Volta River Authority (VRA). Initially the lion's share
of the electricity generated was sold at a discounted
rate to the aluminum smelter at Tema and exported to
Ghana's West African neighbors--leaving a small percentage
for domestic use in major cities. Only since the late
1980s have the wonders of Akosombo kanea (light) reached
rural areas, making the dam's name even more familiar
to ordinary Ghanaians. Akosombo is the name of a township
as well. This city, built for those who constructed
the dam, is now a preferred residence of VRA employees
and their families due to its modern amenities like
reliable electricity, paved roads, good schools, and
health and recreational facilities. The dam has become
a major tourist site, a destination of school trips;
its related meanings are frequent themes in popular
culture, such as songs and clothing styles. Akosombo
stands for Akosombo Textiles Ltd., one of the country's
manufacturer of cloth, and is also used as the generic
name for wax prints produced in Ghana. The dam created
"man's greatest lake" of 8502 square kilometers,
featuring a new transportation network and a fishing
industry. Yet the Akosombo Dam's by-products were not
all beneficial. Lake Volta displaced about 80,000 people,
mainly farmers, affected regional economies, and had
unforseen ecological consequences of changing rainfall
patterns and the increasing prevalence of schistosomiasis.
The word Akosombo serves as a short-hand for the project
of modernization and industrialization launched by Kwame
Nkrumah, independent Ghana's first leader. Although
the results have been mixed at best, Akosombo has remained
a powerful symbol of modernity and nationhood. This
study of Akosombo's meanings not only locates the dam
at the center of Ghana's history over the last fifty
years but also reveals its gendered and cultural implications,
by foregrounding Akosombo's importance for the everyday
lives of Ghanaian men and women and its reflection on
the popular and national consciousness. The project
uses the phenomenon of Akosombo to analyze the larger
process of forging nations and national identities in
postcolonial Africa.
Date and Time: Wednesday, March 15, 2006, 5- 7 pm
Location: Building/Room to be announced.
Title of Presentation: “Contestations Over Wildlife
Property Rights in Kenya”
N. KABIRI, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill,
currently a dissertation scholar at the Department of
Black Studies, UCSB.
[Abstract]
This is a study of contestations over wildlife property
rights between the state and local communities that
host wildlife. Over the years, the state has laid claims
over wildlife to the exclusion of local communities
living with the wildlife. Communities, however, contend
that they bear the brunt of hosting wildlife in their
lands and consequently, they deserve to benefit from
wildlife as an economic resource. External actors have
also argued for the devolution of wildlife property
rights to local communities in a bid to arrest the deterioration
of the wildlife biomass that is attributed to the communities?
lack of interests in conservation. The state presents
an impression that it can cede wildlife property rights
to local communities. This study, however, argues that
the state is unwilling to devolve wildlife property
rights to local communities in a way that would engender
in these communities a private property right consciousness
as argued for by the proponents of community-based conservation.
This argument is analyzed and situated within the various
attempts by the state to placate the communities? clamor
for a stake in wildlife as an economic resource.
Spring 2006
Date and Time: Wednesday, May 3, 2006, 12:30-1:45pm
Location: IV Theater 2
Title of Presentation: “A Welfare State: Discourses
and Practices of Modernization in Southwestern Nigeria,
1940-1960"
Sponsors: The IHC African Studies Research Focus Group,
the Department of History, and the Department of History
of Art and Architecture
[Bio]
Toyin Falola is a Distinguished Teaching Professor and
the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor
in History at the University of Texas at Austin. A Fellow
of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, he is the author
of numerous books, including Violence in Nigeria: The
Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies
and Nationalism and African Intellectuals, both from
the University of Rochester Press. He is the co-editor
of the Journal of African Economic History, Series Editor
of Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora,
Series Editor of the Culture and Customs of Africa by
Greenwood Press, and Series Editor of Classic Authors
and Texts on Africa by Africa World Press.
He has received various awards and honors, most recently
the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence, The
Texas Exes Teaching Award, the Chancellor's Council
Outstanding Teaching Award, the Cecil B Currey Award
for his book, Economic Reforms and Modernization in
Nigeria. For his distinguished contribution to the study
of Africa, his students and colleagues have presented
him with a set of Festschrift edited by Adebayo Oyebade,
The Transformation of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin
Falola, The Foundations of Nigeria: Essays in Honor
of Toyin Falola, and Akin Ogundiran: Precolonial Nigeria:
Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola. His award-winning memoir,
A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt, captures his childhood and
received the Herskovits Finalist Award by the Association
of African Studies and the Hamilton Finalist Award by
the University of Texas. His recent book, Modernization
and Economic Reforms in Nigeria won the Cecil B. Currey
Award by the Association of Third World Studies. His
recent book, Modernization and Economic Reforms in Nigeria
won the Cecil B. Currey Award by the Association of
Third World Studies.
[Abstract]
This is an intellectual history of the 1940s and 1950s
in relations to emerging notions of development, which
ultimately provided the platform art and cultural creativity.
Attempts have been made to make sense of this body of
knowledge. They have been analyzed as historical sources,
as chronicles with organic epistemologies, as the attempts
to construct new ideas of knowledge that connect the
global with the local. What I will attempt is to see
the texts generated after the Second World War as economic
and political manifestoes that speak to us about emerging
notions of citizenship, the "nation", and
the agenda of progress. This can be characterized as
an elite project, but one that attained a consensus
as a nationality project. I will raise three issues,
all under-privileged in the literature: how the Yoruba
"race" was constructed; how the idea of "progress"
became a meta-narrative; and culture was linked with
politics.
Date and Time : Friday, May 12, 2006; 4:00-7:00 pm
Location: Location: IHC Seminar Room, 6056 HSSB
Title of Presentation: “Seminar with Toyin Falola
on his award-winning memoir, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt”
TOYIN FALOLA is Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial
Professor of African History at the University of Texas,
Austin, is the author of numerous books on African History
and Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. He is
the recipient of several awards and honors, including
the Jean Holloway award for teaching excellence.
A seminar with Toyin Falola focused on his award-winning
memoir, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt. The memoir captures
his childhood and received the Herskovits Finalist Award
by the Association of African Studies and the Hamilton
Finalist Award by the University of Texas.
Date and Time: Friday, May 12th, 2006; 4:00-7:00 pm
Location: 2365 South Hall
Title of Event: “Frenchness and the African Diaspora”
Sponsors: The African Studies Research Focus Group,
The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the 7th Annual
UC Irvine-UC Santa Barbara Graduate Student Conference
in French and Francophone Studies, the Departments of
Film Studies, History, and French and Italian
Video Presentation:
Transient Citizens (prod. Didier Gondola, DVD, 50’,
2006)
This documentary takes viewers to a typical Parisian
banlieue, Cité Pont de Créteil in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés,
where French Senegalese journalist Fatimata Wane and
History Professor Didier Gondola engage several young
men, most of them born in that cité, on such
issues as the 2005 riots and their transformation into
a media spectacle. They discuss the contingencies of
the banlieues as it relates to their integration into
French society, relationship to Islam, the homelands
of their parents, and the future of French multiethnic
society.
Panel Introduced and Moderated by Peter Bloom,
Assistant Professor, Department of Film Studies, UCSB
From October 27th to November 15th, 2005 the suburbs
of Paris among other cities in France have been the
center of an urban uprising without precedent during
the post-War period. The youths who were at the center
of these events live in the suburban housing developments
located outside most major cities in France. They are
part of the second and third generation of immigrant
families whose parents and grandparents hail from the
post-colonial francophone geographic landscape. Within
the multi-cultural world of suburban containment, it
is the epidermalization of the beurs and blacks that
have become the most visible symbols of the most recent
unrest, when they took to the streets burning more than
8,000 cars and setting fire to public and private buildings
in their midst as a statement of rage and defiance to
a discriminatory arsenal in which unemployment, ghettoization,
and racial profiling have become normalized and accepted
features of social disenfranchisement. This panel is
to serve as a forum to elaborate upon the sources for
the recent unrest while examining its relationship to
the transformation of contemporary French identity.
Globalization, the African Diaspora, and Popular Music:
Challenging the Concept of Identity in Contemporary
France
Charles Tshimanga-Kashama, Assistant Professor of History,
University of Nevada-Reno
The fundamental questions raised by these young rioters
from 2005 had been foreshadowed for three decades by
rap and rumba music, which faced prohibition by certain
French officials. Songs by musicians and rappers like
Passi, Papa Wemba, and Koffi Olomidé, to name
a few, have evoked these issues. My paper examines how
this popular music, produced by the African diaspora
in France, uses slang, derisive humor, and satire to
address important questions. I examine how, through
music, the African diaspora refers to the French national
motto of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity and questions
the very foundation of the French Republic, as well
as the French model of integration.
Colonization, Indigenization, and the Othering of black
and beur Youth in France
Didier Gondola, Associate Professor of History, IUPUI
The second and third generation of African labor migrants
have been confined within the margins of French society
despite the fact that many of them were born in France
and are French citizens. I examine how French colonial
discursive practices remain operative for young people
of African descent in the so-called banlieues where
high unemployment, poverty, drug trafficking, and police
brutality have colluded to fuel anger and violence.
Drawing from interviews with young black and beur youth
of Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, I argue that vestiges of French
colonial collective memory as well as new patterns of
post-colonial exploitation have contributed to their
indigenization and confinement.
Dates: June 20-21, 2006
Location: Omni Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles
Title of Event: “Second Nollywood Conference”
Lead Organizer: Sylvester Ogbechie
Sponsors: The African Studies Reseach Focus Group is
one of the sponsors of this event.
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie ( Ph.D. Northwestern University
) is a faculty member of the department of History of
Arts and Architecture at the University of California
Santa Barbara . He is an expert on African Knowledge
Systems with extensive scholarly expertise in Classical,
Modern, and Contemporary African and African Diaspora
arts, and Visual Culture. His research evaluates Alternative
Modernities, and the colonial and postcolonial conventions
of representation in the arts and visual cultures of
African and African Diaspora populations.
<<back
