UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
Berkeley/Stanford African Studies Newsletter, Autmn, 1994

Berkeley/Stanford African Studies Newsletter, Autmn, 1994

A Publication of the Berkeley-Stanford Joint Center for African Studies

Autumn 1994

African Studies Announces Fall Activities

Research Focus Groups

The Joint Center has established several Research Focus Groups (RFGs) as vehicles to generate discussion and innovation in scholarship among Africanists in the Northern California region. Each RFG, building on faculty research interests, may have a number of program elements, e.g. teaching, curriculum development, research (faculty, graduate, and undergraduate), and outreach. The RFGs may also generate projects and proposals that will attract extramural funding. The activities of an RFG depend on the interest, input, and enthusiasm of the participants. Over the years RFGs have included: Southern Africa in Transition, Democratization and Political Liberalization, Law and Colonialism, African Languages and Literature, Natural Resources and Management, Disease and Medical Care Reform, and Comparative Discourse on Africa. If you are interested in actively participating in one of these groups, please contact either of the Joint Center offices.

Winners, Rocca Fellowship

The Andrew and Mary Rocca Fellowship is offered annually by the Berkeley Center for African Studies to advanced graduate students at Berkeley. Winners this year include:

Roddie Cole, City and Regional Planning, Housing Delivery Systems in the Gambia: The Impact of Policy Interventio; David Eaton, Anthropology, Emotion and Change in Sexual Culture: Response to AIDS Among Young Men of Congo and Cameroo; Susanne Friedberg, Geography, Gender Relations and Structural Adjustment in West African Periurban Agriculture; Dennis Galvan, Political Science, State Dismantling and National Disintegration: Filling the Institutional and Cultural Void in the Siin Region of Senegal; Kenneth Leonard, Agricultural and Resource Economics, The Role of Contracts, Reputation and Licenses in the Demand for Health Care; Brendan Works, Political Science, Popular Opposition to Apartheid .

These Fellowships are awarded every year through the Center for African Studies at Berkeley. The next competition is scheduled for Spring '95. Look for application announcements in upcoming newsletters.

Locasources, collection and translation of oral history, and proverbs and praise poems. David will discuss his sojourn in Zimbabwe as part of the Graduate Student Predissertation Travel Series (see Calendar section in this newsletter for more information).

Flordeliz Bugarin, an anthropology student at the University of Florida, Gainesville, used her summer FLAS award to study Xhosa at the Second Annual Cooperative Summer African Language Institute, which was held this year at Boston University.

CENTER ANNOUNCEMENTS

Stanford Welcomes New Faculty, Scholars to Campus

OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA

The Center for Global Education offers a spring study abroad program in southern Africa. Women and Development: Southern African Perspectives is an intensive program of study and travel designed to introduce students to the central issues facing southern Africa, with particular emphasis on the experiences of women. The program is based in Windhoek, Namibia. The deadline is October 15, 1994.Contact the Center for Global Education, Augsburg College, 2211 Riverside Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55454. Telephone: (612) 330-1159. Fax: (612) 330-1695. Email: globaled@augsburg.edu.

Africa Bureau Summer Overseas Internship Program - 1995. Graduate students pursuing a degree in fields related to Africa or international affairs are invited to apply for a chance to spend the adian universities to return to Africa for extensive research involving field observation or use of primary sources available only in Africa. Priority is given to research topics in the fields of agriculture, health, population, life sciences, environment, and schooling. Applicants are responsible for arranging affiliation with an African institution able to provide needed research support, such as laboratory facilities, access to study sites, and technical advice. Deadlines are October 1, 1994 and March 1, 1995. For details, write to: African Dissertation Internship Awards, The Rockefeller Foundation, 420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018-2702.

Joint Center Information via Email:
If you would like to receive this newsletter or schedules of upcoming events on-line, please send a request to asc@uclink.berkeley.edu and specify what you would like to receive. We also welcome suggested items for this publication. Thanks for saving a tree!

CALENDAR

Graduate Student Pre-dissertation Travel Series

Several Berkeley graduate students had the opportunity to travel to African countries for work and language study this last summer. In addition to accomplishing their immediate purposes, they were able to do preliminary groundwork for doctoral dissertation research. Such preparations are invaluable for successful research projects and in applying for major research funding. Discover how these students found opportunities for predissertation travel and what they did while there. All meetings will take place on Wednesdays at 4:00 pm in Room 442 of Stephens Hall on the Berkeley campus. Contact the Berkeley Center for details. (510) 642-8338.

October 5Chris Benner, City and Regional Planning. Local Government Restructuring and Urban Transformation: A Case Study of Johannesburg. He spent three months in South Africa consulting for PLANACT.

October 12David Hughes, Anthropology. Local Level Institutions for Managing Natural Resource Use. While in Zimbabwe studying Shona on a summer FLAS fellowship, David visited border areas in both Zimbabwe and Mozambique, located a site, and made contacts for his doctoral research.

October 26Joel Riza, Political Science. Diamonds, Desert, and Cattle in Botswana: A Case for Cautious Optimism.

November 11Jason Myers and Michael Metelits, Political Science. Observing South Africa*s April Elections.

November 16Angela Davies, Anthropology. White Identity in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe.

Africa Table

Africa Table is a noon-time lecture series held each Wednesday in the Assembly Room at the Bechtel Internatinal Center at Stanford. The one-hour brown-bag discussions are free and open to the public. Lectures begin this fall on October 5 and run through November 30. Contact the Stanford Center for details. (415) 723-0295.

October 5 Stanford African Studies Association (SASA) Panel Discussion - The Crisis in Africa is a Crisis of Western Knowledge

October 12 Hilton Root, Hoover Research Fellow - Institutional Foundations of Predatory Rule in Africa

October 19 Carole A. Beakley, Director, and Elijah M (Vusi) Nkosi, Trainer, Community Law Center, Durban, South Africa - The Development Challenges Confronting Rural Communities in the "New" South Africa

October 26 Pamela Scully, Visiting Scholar - Slaves' Emancipation and the Discovery of Infanticide in the Cape Colony, South Africa

November 2 Alemayehu Lirenso, Visiting Scholar, Food Research Institute - Why is Africa Food Insecure? The Ethiopian Experience

November 9 SASA Poetry Reading

November 16 Charles Simkins, Visiting Scholar, Hoover - The ANC's Reconstruction and Redevelopment Programme: What Prospects for Success?

November 30 Martha Saavedra, Joint Center for African Studies Coordinator - Conditions in the Sudan

Local Events

Stanford Performance Series

The Journey of the Spirit: African Religions in the Americas is a performance series that runs through October and November, 1994 at Stanford University. All programs are free and open to the public. Contact the Stanford Humanities Center at (415) 723-3052 for a schedule. Highlights include a lecture entitled The African American Religious Experience by Floyd Thompkins of Memorial Church; and Journey of the Drums: The Force of Life, a celebration of the Orisha (gods) in the religious practices of Nigeria, Cuban Santer*a and Brazilian Candombl*.

Film Festivals

The 17th Annual Mill Valley Film Festival runs from October 6 to October 16, 1994 and will feature a tribute to Idrissa Ouedraogo, a filmmaker and storyteller from Burkina Faso. Le Cri Du Coeur will be shown on Thursday, October 13 at 6:30 at the Sequoia II in Mill Valley. The show costs $15 and will be preceded by a reception at the Avalon restaurant. Thirty five dollars includes the film and reception.

The Mill Valley Film Festival will also present a Southern Africa Series. More Time, In Darkest Hollywood: Cinema and Apartheid, Friends, and Uncommon Ground with None of the Above will all be shown. For tickets to any of the Mill Valley Film Festival shows, contact the box office at (415) 383-5346 or (510) 762-BASS; or send a mail order to Mill Valley Film Festival, 38 Miller Avenue Suite 6, Mill Valley, CA 94941.

Exhibition

Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and African America is an exhibition that runs from September 28, 1994 to February 19, 1995. This exhibition explores the altar as a focus of ritual and art-making, and as an expressive document of the enduring impact of African religions on both sides of the Atlantic. Contact the University Art Museum at Berkeley for more information. Phone: (510) 6423-6494.

The Pacific Film Archive will present several African films during October. Brightness, a screen adaptation of the oral traditions and creation myths of the Bambara people of Mali, will be shown on October 19.VeVe A. ClaSarah Lawrence College is seeking a scholar of broad intellectualinterests and undergraduate teaching experience to instruct courses in African politics and international political economy. Research experience in Africa desired; Ph.D. in political science, economics, or sociology required. Application due date is October 15, 1994. Send c.v., two course descriptions, three letters of recommendation, and a statement of teaching philosophy to Ms. Janet Held, Faculty Secretary, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York 10708.

The University of California, Los Angeles Department of Education and the International Studies and Overseas Programs announce an opening for a tenure-track faculty member (rank open) in Comparative and International Education/African Education. Responsibilities include scholarly research and publication as well as teaching and advising at the graduate level. Screening of applicants will begin October 14, 1994. Send application letter, vita, sample publications, and names and addresses of three references to Marvin D. Alkin, Chair, Department of Education, 405 Hilgard Avenue, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1521. Phone: (310) 825-4800.

FACULTY FEATURE

The Joint Center was fortunate to have its own Co-Director, Robert Price (Political Science, Berkeley), participate in the South Africa elections last spring. We are even more fortunate that he shared his activities with us here:

*I participated in the election as a United Nations observer. Technically I was a member of UNOMSA (the United Nations Observer Mission to South Africa). All together there were some 1,600 UN observers, of whom approximately 60 were from the U.S.

*After several days of briefings in Johannesburg, we were divided up and dispersed throughout the country. I was assigned to the Port Elizabeth area (an industrial city on the Indian Ocean), which is rich in the history of *liberation struggles* having been an early site of both industrial trade unionism and ANC organization. Each observer was paired with an observer from another country (my partner was a Ugandan) and assigned ten voting stations to monitor during the three days of the election. My voting stations were located in the erstwhile black township of Zwide, some 10 miles from Port Elizabeth. During the three days of voting, my partner and I moved among our ten voting stations, observing all aspects of the voting process, talking with voters, election officials, and political party agents. When voters were unable to mark their ballots because of poor eyesight, infirmity, or illiteracy, we monitored the process while the presiding election officer at each voting station marked the ballot.

"Each evening we filed a report with the UNOMSA district headquarters on our day*s observations. They were then faxed to UNOMSA headquarters in Johannesburg, where presumably they were utilized in determining whether the election was substantially free and fair and in compiling the mission*s final report.

*One of the oddities of the UN observer mission in South Africa is that it ended prior to the beginning of the vote count. All of the 1,600 observers who arrived a week prior to the election were pulled out and scheduled to fly out of South Africa within 48 hours from the time the polls closed. Since in some parts of the country voting was extended for an extra day, this meant that U.N. observers were actually being brought back to Johannesburg for *out-processing* before the polls in their area actually closed. There was a great deal of consternation among observers about this aspect of the U.N. mission, but no explanation for this odd bit of planning was ever offered us. Some observers, myself included, made our own arrangements and stayed on in South Africa during and after the counting period, but that was as a private citizen and not as part of the U.N. mission.*

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in hearing more about U.N. observers* experiences, you may like to attend a Travel Series presentation by UC Berkeley Political Science graduate students Jason Myers and Michael Metelits on November 11, 1994. Please refer to the Calendar section of this newsletter.

Student Highlight: Rod Alence is the second Stanford doctoral candidate to study and teach at the University of the Western Cape as part of an exchange program between UWC and Stanford's South African Faculty Inititiaves Committee. Rod is currently in the midst of teaching his second course, African Politics and Political Economy, to undergraduate UWC students. This month he will also be presenting a draft chapter of his dissertation as part of the Political Studies Seminar Series at UWC. In addition, he gave an oral presentation at the South African Institute for International Affairs last month. Rod is even a part-time member of the UWC basketball team.


Joint Center for African Studies

University of California 356 Stephens Hall #2314 Berkeley, CA 94720-2314 (510) 642-8338 asc@uclink.berkeley.edu Stanford University Littlefield Center Rm. 22 Stanford, CA 94305-5013 (415) 723-0295 Robert Price, Co-Director Political Science, UC Berkeley Richard Roberts, Co-Director History, Stanford Martha Saavedra, Center Coordinator, UC Berkeley Marianne Villanueva, Co-Editor Jane Bomberger, Co-Editor Brett Bowman, Graphic Artist Message-Id: <199411232120.VAA29094@orion.sas.upenn.edu> Date: Wed, 23 Nov 94 13:20:05 PST From: "jane.bomb" Subject: African Studies Newsletter, Autumn 1994 Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar

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