WARA Conference: The Changing Dynamics of Memory and Community in
West African History, 07/05
The Changing Dynamics of Memory and Community in West African History
A summer institute for college and university faculty
Summer 2005, July 17 - July 30
University of Ghana
Legon, Ghana
Program statement: The lack of written sources and the oral nature of
African societies once left Africa in the domain of anthropology, not
history. Pioneering historians of Africa formulated a methodology that
would submit oral traditions to the methods and techniques of textual
criticism. Using written sources to amplify and cross-check oral
traditions and eye-witness accounts was crucial for pioneers like Jan
Vansina to establish the validity of oral evidence. Historians today
embrace memory as dynamic, with different recollections of an event at
different points in an informant's lifetime not necessarily contradictory
or divergent. Anthropologists grapple with a similarly basic challenge in
critiques of their concept of community. It assumes a culture and society
that are neatly bounded and relatively homogeneous, and it underpins the
central ethnographic methodology of participant observation. Recognizing
the reality of multiple conflicting identities within and intimate
transnational connections between communities, researchers now question
common-sense dichotomies like insider//outsider, traditional//modern, and
local//global. Going beyond these simple definitions has involved paying
serious but critical attention to historical imagination and textual
history. As shifting paradigms in both fields bring their methodologies
closer together, this summer institute will investigate how much these new
approaches to memory and community have privileged African voices and
advanced the pursuit of usable knowledge. The institute will also address
non-oral sources, written and visual, and examine scholarly approaches
within and outside Africa.
Tentative Schedule and Itinerary: The institute will be based at the
Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana and will consist
of a series of lectures, seminars and discussion sessions. In addition, as
part of the institute, participants will travel to Kumasi and to Cape
Coast and Elmina castles.
Costs: The cost per participant is $2,500. This fee will include the full
cost of the seminar sessions at the University of Ghana (all lectures and
seminars); lodging, breakfasts, lunches, and approximately one half of the
evening meals; and all local and in-country transportation. Participants
will be responsible for their own airfare to and from Accra; bar,
telephone and other incidental expenses; and occasional evening meals.
Dr. Ibrahima Thioub (Universite Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal) and Dr.
Sandra E. Greene, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY) will team up to serve as
directors of the 2005 WARA Summer Institute.
Professor Thioub is the Chair of the History Department at Universite
Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. He holds a doctorate in African Modern History
and teaches courses on the history and historiography of Africa, the
history of Islam, and African historiography of slavery and the Atlantic
slave trade. His research interests also include art, music and
literature; the history of film; labor history, diplomatic history and
international affairs, educational technology, environmental and
agricultural history and geography. Professor Thioub is the president of
the Association de Recherche Ouest Africain and is on the advisory board
for H-West Africa.
Professor Greene is Chair of the History Department at Cornell University
and past president of the African Studies Association. She holds a
doctorate in African History and her research and teaching have focused on
West African history, particularly of the Anlo-Ewe in Ghana, gender,
colonialism, the geographies of religious change, and the legacy of the
Atlantic slave trade. She has published numerous articles on the political
and cultural history of the Anlo-Ewe of Ghana, and is the author of
Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast (1996) and
Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory
in Ghana (2002).
Application: Participation in the seminar will be limited to 12. For more
information or an application form please contact WARA at wara@bu.edu.
Applications must be received by February 15. A $500 deposit is required
to reserve a space upon notification of acceptance to the institute. This
deposit will be non-refundable after 1 April 2004. The balance of $2,000
must be paid before the start of the institute. A detailed program will be
sent to all participants in early May.
Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.