The Department of Pan-African Studies would like to welcome nationally and internationally known author and scholar, Dr. Michael Gomez. Dr. Gomez will be presenting a lecture in Oscar Ritche Hall on September 14 at 7pm. There will be a reception at 6pm in the ORH foyer.
Michael A. Gomez is currently professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, having served as the director of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) from its inception in 2000 to 2007. He has also served as chair of the History departments at both NYU and Spelman College, and served as President of UNESCO's International Scientific Committee for the Slave Route Project from 2009 to 2011.
His first book, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu (Cambridge University Press, 1992), examines a Muslim polity in what is now eastern Senegal. The next publication, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (University of North Carolina Press, 1998), is concerned with questions of culture and race as they were informed by the African presence and experience. Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (Cambridge University Press, 2005) is primarily aimed at an undergraduate audience, and is more fully involved with the idea of an African diaspora, as is Diasporic Africa: A Reader (New York University Press, 2006), an edited volume that spans time and space in investigating a variety of themes and issues. Black Crescent: African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2005, Black Caucus of the American Library Association 2006 Literary Awards Winner for Nonfiction Category), continues with the study of the African diaspora by looking at the ways in which African Muslims negotiated their bondage and freedom throughout the Americas, but in a way that allows for significant integration of Islamic Africa. He is currently working on a history of medieval West Africa and is involved with the manuscript collection project underway in Mali.
