Fall 2008 Seminar Series

"Come to Africa and it is here!"
African Americans & Africa
Fall 2008 Seminar Series

How have African Americans viewed Africa? What has been the interaction of African Americans with the continent since emancipation in the United States? Are there any similarities to the way post-Emancipation America and colonial Africa reacted to the attempts of Africans and African Americans struggling for their social and political rights?

This seminar series intends to investigate these questions and more through a series of lectures by Africanists and African Americanists from KU and throughout the country. Topics will include:

• African American missionary work in the 19th century
  
• African American journeys to the continent during the 19th and 20th centuries
• African American intellectuals' perceptions of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries
• African American tourism and the African slave trade
• Comparative study of vigilante violence in Africa and the American south.

Join us Thursdays in the International Room of the Kansas Union, 3:30-5:00 p.m.

Thursday, October 9:
Shawn Leigh Alexander, KU

Thursday, October 23:
"Race, Politics and History: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Encyclopedia Africana Project"
James T. Campbell, Edgar E. Robinson Professor of American History, Stanford University

Thursday, October 30:
"The Deeper Meaning of Common Sense: Collective Violence and White Agrarian Elites in the American South and South Africa, 1900-1927."
John Higginson, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Thursday, November 6:
Liz MacGonagle & Kim Warren, KU

Thursday November 20:
Randal Jelks, KU