UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
Sixth Annual African Studies Consortium Workshop

Sixth Annual African Studies Consortium Workshop

"COMMUNICATING AFRICA"
Friday, October 2, 1998

FACULTY CLUB
Alumni Hall, Club Room, and Lenape Room
University of Pennsylvania

sponsored by University of Pennsylvania, and Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges


SESSION A

Panel 1
8:30 - 10:00
(Alumni Hall)

Writers and Bards: The "Professionals" Communicate

Dan Ben-Amos, University of Pennsylvania: "The King Who Buried his Wife Alive"
Nilgun Anadolu Okur, Temple University: "At Crossroads of Reconstruction: Ritual and Tradition in Contemporary Nigerian Drama, Femi Osofisan and Tess Akaeke Onwueme "
Nadève Ménard, University of Pennsylvania: "Stabilizing the métis in Henri Lopes' Le Chercheur d'Afriques "
David Conrad, SUNY-Oswego: "Fear and Loathing in Northeastern Guinea: Bardic Constructions of Wicked Sorcerers and Dangerous Medicine"

Chair: Kwesi Yankah, University of Pennsylvania, University of Ghana
Discussant: Oluropo Sekoni, Lincoln University


SESSION A

Panel 2
8:30 - 10:00
(Club Room)

Africa in the American Imagination

Curtis Keim, Moravian College: "Images of Africa among College Students"
Kandioura Drame, University of Virginia: "Images of Africa Presented to African Students and Professors"
Lynda Hill, Temple University: "Images of Africa among Contemporary African-Americans"
Stan Yoder, University of Pennsylvania: "Images of Africa from Americans Living orTravelling in Africa"

Chair: Carolyn Holmes, Philadelphia School District, African-American Studies Dept.
Discussant: Doug Anthony, Franklin & Marshall College


SESSION B

Panel 3

10:30-12:00
(Alumni Hall)

Borrowed Canons and the Making of South African Culture

Amanda Kemp, Cornell University: "Playing the Negro: Black South African Radicals on Stage in Everyday Life"
Carol Muller, University of Pennsylvania: "Capturing the 'Spirit of America' in the Music of South African-American Jazz Singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin"
Rita Barnard, University of Pennsylvania: "On Miss South Africa and Madiba Magic: Beauty, Race and Nation in the New South Africa"

Chair: Farah Griffin, University of Pennsylvania
Discussant: Timothy Burke, Swarthmore College


SESSION B

Panel 4
10:30-12:00
(Club Room)

Self-Representation through African Popular Media

Leigh Swigart, University of Pennsylvania: "Communicating the Quotidian: The Conjuncture of Language and Message in Senegalese Popular Media"
Solimar Otero, University of Pennsylvania: "Ikû and Cuban Nationhood: Yoruba Mythology in the Film Guantanamera"
Pedzisai Mashiri, University of Zimbabwe: "Television Drama in Zimbabwe and the Representation of Blacks and the City"

Chair: Karega-Munene, University of Pennsylvania, National Museums of Kenya
Discussant: Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, University of Pennsylvania


LUNCH
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

1:00 - 2:00
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Gregory B. Simpkins
Policy Director-Corporate Council on Africa, Journalist, and
Former Staff Member of U. S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa

SESSION C

Panel 5

2:30-4:00
(Alumni Hall)

Africa and the Western Media (Part I)

Jo Ellen Fair, University of Wisconsin, and Lisa Parks, UC-Santa Barbara: "Surveillance of Violence in Africa: Cameras, Satellites, Imagemaking, and Responsibility"
Charles Okigbo, University of North Dakota (with Mary Kizito and Christine Kyayonka): "Communicating Africa: Analysis of African Media Content"
Rod Chavis, Philadelphia Neighborhood Development Project: "Communicating Africa in the Western Media"
Robert Washington, Bryn Mawr College: "The Media's Peculiar Coverage of Clinton's Africa Visit"

Chair: Mary Osirim, Bryn Mawr College
Discussant: Rick Shain, Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science


SESSION C

Panel 6

2:30-4:00
(Lenape Room)

Communicating Contemporary Dilemmas

Thomas Callaghy, University of Pennsylvania: "Intervention and Sovereignty in Africa: Networks and Innovation in the International Debt Regime"
James Zaffiro, Central College, Iowa: "Democratization, Civil Society and the State: Comparing the Role of Mass Media in Zimbabwe and Botswana"
P. L. E. Idahosa, York University Founders College: "Globalization, Sovereignty and the African Nation-State"
Elizabeth Jamillah Koné, Temple School of Law: "The Right of Self-Determination in the Angolan Enclave of Cabinda"
Stephen Howard, Ohio University: "Communicating Islamic Reform: the Campaigns of the Republican Brotherhood"

Chair: Steve O' Connell, Swarthmore College
Discussant: Marc Ross, Bryn Mawr College


SESSION C

Panel 7

2:30-4:00
(Club Room)

Visions of the African Other

Neil Sobania, Hope College: "Where's the Beef? 125 Years of Maasai and Zulu Images in Popular Culture"
Andrew Gordon, University of South Carolina: "Finding Oneself in the African Other: European/American Observations on the Fulani"
Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, Brown University: "As to the Position of Women: African Women in Western Travel Writings"
Jennifer J. Schaming, University of North Carolina: "Not at Face Value: The Importance of Employing a Feminist Critical Cultural Perspective in Studying Media Portrayals of Sub-Saharan African Women"

Chair: Ahmed Shariff, University of Pennsylvania
Discussant: Lee Cassanelli, University of Pennsylvania


SESSION D

Panel 8

4:30-6:00
(Alumni Hall)

Africa and the Western Media (Part 2)

Barbara DeGorge, St. John's University "The Modern Day Slave Trade and the Media: Slavery in the Sudan"
Tonya Taylor, University of Pennsylvania: "The Construction of the Dangerous African Other"
Keith Snow, Freelance Journalist & Photographer: "Assessing Images of Africa in the Western Media"
Vera Viditz-Ward, Bloomsburg University: "Photographers in the Field: Contexts and Consequences"

Chair: Ali B. Dinar, University of Pennsylvania
Discussant: Allyson Purpura, Haverford College


SESSION D

Panel 9
4:30-6:00
(Club Room)

African Knowledge: Intellectual Negotiations

Maghan Keita, Villanova University: "Africa Backwards and Forwards: Interpreting Africa and Africans in Pre-and Post-Modern Space"
Peter Glomset, Villanova University: "The Gutenberg Galaxy and Africa"
Kwesi Yankah, University of Pennsylvania; University Of Ghana "Africa and the Academic Media"

Chair: Tracey Hucks, Haverford College
Discussant: Lucius Outlaw, Haverford College


8:00 p.m. to Midnight
African Studies Party & Dance
The Gold Standard
36th & Locust Walk
University of Pennsylvania


Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar

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