Center for African Studies

Ousseina Alidou, Rutgers University. COVID-19 Pandemic, Hausa Muslim Poetic Narratives, Compassion and Resistance. December 1 | 11:45am EST

Attend through Zoom Meeting:
https://ufl.zoom.us/j/91735731699

While the world scientific communities are racing to find a biomedical cure and vaccine against COVID-19, governments throughout the world are struggling to limit the spread of the virus. Throughout the world, artists have stepped in through their creative performances to contribute to the fight against this pandemic – including in Africa. The aim of this talk is to apply a Critical Discourse Analysis in examining the roles of Hausa popular singers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Nigeria, Niger Republic, Ghana, and in the Hausa Global Diaspora. The analysis will explore their creative and communicative efficacy in crafting culturally relevant life-saving public health messages that address Islamic (and religious) ethics of care. Moreover, the presentation offers a critical examination of the ways in which Hausa artists are using poetic narratives as a vehicle for depicting the sociopolitical and economic realities of the masses confronted by COVID-19 pandemic and for inscribing their political criticism of the impacts of local and national governance in their preparedness to tackle adequately the complexities socioeconomic inequalities unveiled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ousseina D. Alidou is Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the former director of the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University, and she is also a Senior Faculty Advisor to UNESCO BREDA’s Gender and Transformative Leadership Curriculum Design for African Universities. She is the author of Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger (2005);  Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya: Leadership, Representation, Political and Social Change (2013). Professor Alidou is moreover the recipient of several national and international scholarly and service awards.