Symposium: Pre-colonial African History in a Post-Colonial Age,
03/05
The University of Wisconsin African Studies Program's spring
symposium will be held March 11-13, 2005 at the Pyle Center in
Madison. Entitled 'Pre-Colonial African History in a Post-Colonial
Age', participants will critically assess innovative methods
developed in African history over the past half century. While many
of these techniques were first devised to study pre-colonial history,
they have been increasingly employed for colonial and post-colonial
history as well in order to recover African historical perspectives,
experiences, and thinking in such diverse fields as environmental
history, labor history, medical history, cultural history, religious
history, intellectual history, and political history.
In the process, a new dynamic has developed between pre-colonial,
colonial and post-colonial history in Africa as historians explore
the ongoing connections between the deep past, the more recent past,
and the present. On a methodological level, techniques developed to
study the pre-colonial past have been extended and reconsidered to
develop innovative approaches to understanding colonial and
post-colonial societies. And from a theoretical perspective, the
debate between pre-colonialists, colonialists, and modernists has
changed dramatically as analytical categories forged by
pre-colonialists (such as 'tradition,' 'peasant discourse,' 'moral
economy', etc.) have influenced historians' scrutiny of later periods
and vice versa.
In addition to the scheduled presentations, we will celebrate the
45th anniversary of the African History program at a dinner at the
University Club on Saturday night.
To obtain more information, register, or make reservations for
dinner, please see the symposium web site:
http://history.wisc.edu/symposium2005.
Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.