Welcome Back from Director Brenda Chalfin
Dear CAS Students, Faculty, Friends and Affiliates:
Welcome Back to Campus!
As the 2017-18 Academic Year takes off we look forward to your involvement in Center programs and activities.
Mark your calendars. Our first Baraza is scheduled for Friday, September 8 with Xolela Mangcu from the University of Cape Town. The CAS Fall Party will be held at Ustler Hall on Saturday evening, September 23. In late October we welcome CAS Artist-in-Residence Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, founder of Ghana’s Accra Theater Workshop. Plans for the 2018 Carter Conference, “Imagining Africa: Text-Image Assemblages,” scheduled for February 9-10 are already underway.
Over the summer CAS was home to the African Flagship Language Initiative, the country’s premier African student language training program. Over 40 students from UF and universities around the US undertook 8-weeks of intensive study of Akan, Swahili, Yoruba, Wolof, French and Portuguese with the guidance of over a dozen instructors, host families and language partners. In June CAS hosted its annual Teacher Training Institute. In July we launched “Around Africa” our first partnership for middle school students through Santa Fe’s ‘College for Kids’. CAS Administrative coordinator Ike Akinyemi and staff members Tricia Kuhn and Brenda Lugano were instrumental to the success of all these initiatives.
Students and faculty traveled to Africa for research, field schools, study abroad, and visits with friends, family and alumni across the continent. We had a mini-UF reunion at the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) in Basel, Switzerland in early June. CAS sponsored two undergraduate Research Tutorials Abroad. Department of Theatre and Dance students accompanied Center for World Arts faculty Mohamed Decosta to Guinea. Linguistics students assisted Professor James Essegbey in Ghana. Professor of African History Susan Obrien visited Nigeria with CAS University Scholar. Other students partook in summer language study, research projects, and field practicums in Ethiopia, Swaziland, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Mali, Congo, and South Africa. We welcome Associate Director Todd Leedy back from sabbatical research and study abroad programming in South Africa. CAS Outreach Director Agnes Leslie recently returned from a summer Fulbright fellowship in Zambia where she studied women’s political leadership.
At the Center we are moving forward with an academic partnership with South Africa’s Stellenbosch University in close cooperation with UF’s Graduate School and we are working on an MOU with the University of Ghana. I spent a week at each institution in August fine-tuning plans, tapping into intellectual life on-campus, and making the most of UF’s vast Africanist network. While in Stellenbosch I bumped into UF Geography chair Jane Southworth and our own Brian Child. I also met with fellow anthropologists and urbanists at the University of Western Cape and University of Capetown. In Ghana, I rubbed shoulders with UF African Art History alums along with Harn Museum Director Rebecca Nagy at the ACASA conference, along with luminaries from Ghana’s contemporary art and architectural community: kąrî’kạchä seid’ou, Atta Kwame, and Joe Addo, who are each engaging African urban culture in new ways. These exchanges all open the door for collaboration and enhance on-campus programs and opportunities.
In the upcoming year, along with African Studies courses, conferences, working groups, speaker series and and public outreach, renewal of our US Department of Education Title VI grant is high on the agenda. Despite the threat of funding cuts, for the time being the program looks like it will be sustained. This is due in part to the tremendous advocacy across the Africanist and academic community making clear the contribution of Africa Area Studies to vital national and international issues. The value of African Studies to the UF community is recognized by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences administration. Two searches are soon to be underway: one for an expert in African Politics and another for an expert in Medical Anthropology in Africa. We are also working towards establishing a dedicated MA degree in African Studies.
At CAS we continue to look beyond CLAS to forge ties with students and faculty across the university. We are also building our Alumni network and plan to formally launch our Alumni Association this fall.
Please do share the CAS newsletter with anyone who may be interested. New contact info can be sent to our new Communication and Information Assistant, Riley Ravary ravaryri@ufl.edu or ufcasbulletin@gmail.com
We welcome your participation in African Studies at UF.
Brenda Chalfin