Gallery Exhibit & Reception: Isaac Kwame Awuku
February 16, 2012
Wood Carving demonstration 2:00-4:00pm
Lecture at 3:00pm
Reception at 5:30pm
Isaac Kwame Awuku, from Accra, Ghana, is a well known West African artist who, fortunately for us, is visiting Kent this year. He began creating art at the age of eleven, learning traditional carving techniques from his family. He studied for five years at the Opportunity Industrialization Centre, in Ghana, concentrating on the art of wood and clay sculptures. Awuku has established himself as a renowned artist and arts educator, developed arts programs for children and elders in Ghana, and lectured extensively in the United States.
Lecture by Professor Ibra Sene
Youth, Religion, and Cultural Identity in the Era of Globalization: Hizbut Tarqiyya (Senegal), 1975-2008
March 13, 2012
Reception 5:30-6:30pm
Lecture at 7:00pm
2nd floor lecture hall - Oscar Ritchie
Ibra Sene is a professor at Wooster College. Hizbut Tarqiyya is a youth movement of young Mourid intellectuals. The Muridiyya is the largest Islamic brotherhood in Senegal, created by a Sufi master, Cheikh Ahmadu Bamba, during the years preceding and just after the installation of French colonial rule.
Since the 1960s, various social movements have emerged in West Africa and have deeply shaken the region in many ways. Manifesting themselves in different forms, these movements have challenged, altered, and, in some cases, reinvented economic and political spaces and institutions. To the contrary of a widely shared belief, these movements have not just mobilized adult heads of household. Instead, their trajectories have been profoundly shaped by the youth whose active leadership has left enduring marks on their societies. With Hizbut Tarqiyya as a case study, this project focuses on the role played by the Senegalese youth organizations in the context of these social movements.
Lecture by Assistant Professor Hilary Jones
The Métis of Senegal: Race, Class, and Urban Life in Colonial West Africa
**POSTPONED** until Fall
Hilary Jones is Assistant Professor of History, West Africa and Africa Diaspora, at University of Maryland, College park. Her research interests include nineteenth century Africa, French colonialism, the francophone Atlantic, histories of power and politics and women, race and class. Her book, The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa will appear with Indiana University Press in October 2012. Based on archival research and field work in Senegal and France, this study offers fresh insight into the making of mixed race identity and the role of urban elites in Senegal’s early political history. Jones is the recipient of fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, The Center for African and Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan, Africana Studies at University of Notre Dame, and University of Maryland’s Graduate School.
Events presented through support from the Ohio Humanities Council