Events and Issues
– International Conference on Sufi Performance Strengthens Ties Between UNC and UCAD
By Emma Harver
June 29, 2017 Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) collaborated together on the international conference “ZIKR | Locating Sufi Performance: Critical Perspectives on Music, Ritual, and Remembrance,” held in Dakar, Senegal June 5-7, 2017.
This was the first joint conference held in partnership between the two institutions, which have had a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) since 2009. Key members of the conference planning committee included Carl Ernst, William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations; Michael Figueroa, assistant professor of music at UNC; Ibrahima Thioub, rector of UCAD; and Mamarame Seck, research professor at UCAD’s l’Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire.
Read more on the story in this link: http://global.unc.edu/news/international-conference-on-sufi-performance-strengthens-ties-between-unc-and-ucad/.
– Decolonizing Philosophy
By Ryan M. Nefdt
Africa is a country – June 30, 2017
Many philosophers consider their field to be the mother of all disciplines. The popular picture is that philosophy, like a fertile womb, gives birth to other sciences and fields of inquiry which then move on with their own methodology and concerns (and they never call their parents!). Naturally, if there is any credence to this methodology, then decolonization of the curriculum or academia needs to start with philosophy.
Read more on the story in this link:
– Sudanese Scientist Battles Climate Change in Africa
By Ismail Kushkush
Khartoum, Sudan – She’s seen it before. The images of dry, cracked lands; dead trees; animal corposes; hungry children and lines of people waiting for food assistance are not new to her.
The current drought and resulting food crisis affecting millions across the Horn of Africa are painful reminders of the importance of her work.
But that’s not all that bothers her. Across the Atlantic, the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and proposed policies to reverse the United States’ contribution to the fight against climate change dishearten her. They add insult to injury.
“This is the problem with climate change: it’s caused by the large emissions of industrialised countries, so they are more responsible for the climate change phenomenon,” said Balgis Osman-Elasha, a climate change expert with the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/sudanese-scientist-battles-climate-change-africa-170621211009146.html
– Bushra al-Fadil wins 18th Caine Prize for African Writing
3 July 2017
Bushra al-Fadil has won the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for his short story entitled “The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away”, translated by Max Shmookler, published in The Book of Khartoum – A City in Short Fiction (Comma Press, UK. 2016). The Chair of Judges, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, announced Bushra al-Fadil as the winner of the £10,000 prize at an award dinner this evening (Monday, 3 July) held for the first time in Senate House, London, in partnership with SOAS as part of their centenary celebrations. As a translated story, the prize money will be split – with £7,000 going to Bushra and £3,000 to the translator, Max Shmookler. “The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away” vividly describes life in a bustling market through the eyes of the narrator, who becomes entranced by a beautiful woman he sees there one day. After a series of brief encounters, tragedy unexpectedly befalls the woman and her young female companion.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://caineprize.com/press-releases/2017/7/3/bushra-al-fadil-wins-18th-caine-prize-for-african-writing
– Call for Proposals: 2018 AIMS Annual Conference in Oran, Algeria
The American Institute for Maghrib Studies is seeking proposals from organizers for its 2018 annual conference. The annual AIMS conference is a signature event that brings together delegations of scholars from the US, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, as well as individual scholars from Mauritania and Libya. The 2018 AIMS conference will be held in Oran in the summer 2018. AIMS members who are interested in proposing a theme with resonance across North Africa are encouraged to submit a formal proposal no later than August 15, 2017. The selection committee will look favorably on applications that envision an interdisciplinary conference that incorporates both historical and contemporary perspectives. Up to USD 20,000 will be made available to support the annual conference. Additional details about the conference, as well as the proposal requirements, can be found here: http://aimsnorthafrica.org/annual-conference/
Questions? Please contact Jonathan Wyrtzen at jonathan.wyrtzen@yale.edu.
Jonathan Wyrtzen
Associate Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, History
Yale University
493 College #307
New Haven, CT 06511
Phone: 203 432 5172
jonathan.wyrtzen@yale.edu
http://sociology.yale.edu/people/jonathan-wyrtzen
*** Now available: Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Cornell University Press) ****
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
– Abdilatif Abdalla: Poet in Politics
[عبد اللطيف عبد الله: شاعر في السياسة]
Authors: Rose Marie Beck and Kai Kresse (editors)
This slim volume is a celebration of the genius, as well as the artistic and political contributions of one of Africa’s premier poets, the Mombasa born Abdilatif Abdalla. The volume was put together by Rose Marie Beck, Professor of African Languages and Literatures at the University of Leipzig and Kai Kresse, an Associate Professor of African and Swahili Studies from Columbia University in the United States. Together the two brought together glowing assessments and critical perspectives from a range of colleagues, comrades and associates of Abdilatif Abdalla who retired at the end of April 2011 after 15 years on the faculty of the University of Leipzig in Germany.
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania, 2017
– Where are you from? ‘Playing White’ under Apartheid [من أي بلد أنت؟: الادعاء بالانتماء الى البيض في ظل نظام الفصل العنصري أبارتايد]
Author: Ulla Dentlinger
“My family did the unthinkable: after getting away with ‘playing white’ for some years, we went one step further and ‘jumped the colour line’. By various obscure and not well-documented processes, we changed our ‘racial classification’ from ‘coloured’ – as defined by the apartheid policy of the day – to that of ‘white’ … The price we paid was anguish, constant fear of detection and a sacrifice of family connectedness. The decades-long process of becoming completely comfortable with my ultimate identity was psychologically so unnerving that I have only recently felt free to talk about it. This is certainly the first time I have ever written about it.” With these words the fascinating story of Ulla Dentlinger’s life history begins. Growing up in poor, rural Apartheid-Namibia in the early 1950s, Ulla Dentlinger soon learns that her parents are not prone to reminisce about their family’s past. The most mundane information about their background is guarded much like a state secret. As a child, she begins to panic at being asked the question so normal to others: Where are you from? Only in later years it dawns on her that she had to be a ‘Coloured’. The sense of conflict increases incrementally. Nonetheless, after living in Namibia for the first six years of her life, she grows up in a white area in Cape Town, goes to a white school and bears herself in a German fashion. She has, in fact, jumped the colour line. Returning to southern Africa in the 1990s, she now openly pursues investigations into her family background. Ulla Dentlinger portrays some of her relatives and their intimate, painful or straightforward stories as well as her own emotional realisation about her enriching heritage.
Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2016
– Coming of Age. Strides in African Publishing Essays in Honour of Dr Henry Chakava at 70
[خطوات نحو النضوج: تطورات في دور النشر الأفريقية. مقالات في تكريم الدكتور هنري تشاكافا]
Author: Kiarie Kamau, Kirimi Mitambo (Editor)
The sixteen chapters in this book form a Festschrift in honour of Henry Chakava, the distinguished Kenyan publisher who is widely recognized as one of the continent’s most dynamic and most innovative publisher, as well as being a prolific author of numerous articles and studies on many aspects of publishing and the book sector in Africa.
Publisher: East African Educational Publishers, Kenya, 2016
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Research Africa welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in next week’s edition.
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