Center for African Studies

R. Hunt Davis, Jr. earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and joined the University of Florida faculty in 1967 as its first historian of Africa.  He developed and taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate African history and African Studies courses until his retirement in 2004. Hunt’s research and publications focused primarily on South African history.  He served as Director of the Center for African Studies, 1979-1988; the founding Associate …

Susan Cooksey is the former curator of African Art at the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida.  She strengthened the Harn’s African collection by adding works from diverse regions of Africa and the African diaspora previously unrepresented, and by acquiring a large number of works by women artists and prominent contemporary artists.  While curating forty-five exhibitions she worked with partners on the University of Florida campus as well as local, national, and international artists, …

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Barbara McDade Gordon is Associate Professor Emerita, Geography & African Studies, University of Florida; an Affiliate Faculty Member in the Center for Arts, Migration, & Entrepreneurship (CAME) in the UF College of the Arts; and serves on the Advisory Committee of the African American Studies Program at UF.  She is a founding director of the Alachua County African and African American Historical Society, member of Alachua County African American History Task Force, Past President of …

Rebecca Nagy directed UF’s Harn Museum of Art from 2002-2018. She was an affiliate faculty member in the College of the Arts and the Center for African Studies. Prior to her appointment as director of the Harn, Nagy spent 17 years at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, where she was curator of African art and associate director of education. She was an adjunct faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Chapel …

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Luise White researched and wrote about the social and political history of East and Central Africa in the 20th century.  She retired from the Department of History at UF in 2018.  She is the author of five books, including The Comforts of Home:  Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago, 1990), Speaking with Vampires:  Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (California, 2000), and most recently Fighting and Writing:  The Rhodesian Army at War and Postwar (Duke, 2021) …