Autumn Term
October 6: Fall Welcome Event with Cécile Fromont (Department of Art History, University of Chicago)
October 20: Maura Capps (PhD Candidate, Department of History), “Spurning the Trekboer Cowboy: Negotiating Grain, Grass, and Granger in the Cape Colony, 1801-1819.” Discussant John Cropper
*Special Date & Location* Thursday, November 5: Special Joint Workshop with the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop featuring Dr. Susan Kus (Rhodes College, Anthropology and Sociology), “Relentless Dance and Taunting Verse: Body, Emotion and Gender in the ‘Art’ and ‘Theatre’ of Warfare in Pre-colonial Madagascar.” TIme and location: Haskell Hall 315 at 4:30 p.m
December 1: Zebulon Dingley (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology), “Mumiani: Rumor and Sacrifice in South Coast, Kenya.”
Winter Term
January 26: Lesley Braun (Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Comparative Human Development), “Visibility, Virtue & Virtuosity.”
February 9: Brady Smith (Humanities Teaching Scholar, Department of English,University of Chicago), “South African Literature: An Environmental History” with special guest discussant Priya Nelson (Associate Editor, The University of Chicago Press).
February 23: African Studies Distinguished Lecture Series with Dr. Christopher Steiner (Department of Art History, Connecticut College), ” Masks, Markets, & Missionaries: Liberia, 1925-1960,” Franke Institutefor the Humanities at 5:30 pm.
*Special Time and Location* Thursday, March 3: Occasional African Studies Workshop with Marshall Sahlins, “The Atemporal Dimensions of History: In the Old Kongo Kingdom, For Example.” 4:30 pm in Pick 319.
March 8: Mary Robertson (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology), “Face-to-Face Marketing and the Two-Faced Brand: Localization and the Instabilities of Mediation in South African Advertising.”
Spring Term
April 5: Erin Moore (PhD Candidate, Department of Comparative Human Development), “Cultural Brokers and the Paradoxes of ‘Local’ Expertise.”
April 15: Peter Mark (Department of Art and Art History, Wesleyan University), “Context, Context, Context: A Methodological Approach to Pre-Colonial African Art History.”
April 19: African Studies Distinguished Lecturer with James Smith (Department of Anthropology, University of California-Davis). “Extracting Life from Your iPhone: Thoughts on Silicon Valley’s Response to ‘Conflict Minerals’ and Congolese Artisanal Mining.” 5:30-7pm in Social Sciences 122.
*Special time and location* April 27: James Robinson (University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy), joint sponsored with Comparative Politics Workshop. “The Evolution of Culture and Institutions: Evidence from the Kuba Kingdom.” 5 – 7 PM in the Social Sciences Tea Room (SS201).
May 3: African Studies Distinguished Lecture welcomes a discussion with James Ferguson (Department of Anthropology, Stanford University) on his recent book Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution. 5:30pm, Franke Institute for the Humanities.
*Special Event* Thursday and Friday, May 5-6: Gender | Publics | Panics in the Global South. ASW spring conference, organized in collaboration with Gender Studies.
May 17: Jorge Campos-Téllez (PhD Student, Department of Anthropology), “On Taxes and Suspicion: Ambivalences of Rule and The Politically Possible in Hargeysa, Somaliland.”
May 19: Red Lion Lecture welcomes Mark DeLancey (History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University), “Palace Architecture in Colonial Cameroon.”
May 31: Elizabeth Fretwell (PhD Candidate, Department of History), “French Colonial Policy and the ‘Casted’ Artisan in Dahomey.”