MAAAS 2002 CONFERENCE

By Ken Lohrenz, MAAAS Past-President

Ken Lohrenz in his office.

The 8th annual conference of the Mid-America Alliance for African Studies was hosted by the Women's Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma September 20-22, 2002. Betty J. Harris, director of the OU Women's Studies Program, served as conference convener and host. The theme for the conference was "Globalization and its Discontents." Eight panel sessions were organized around this theme, with approximately forty scholars from throughout the region in attendance as presenters or as participants. Papers presented by four of the participants, including the paper of Garth A. Myers from the University of Kansas, are available on OU Women's Studies Web site in PDF format

Dr. Maxwell Owusu, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, presented the keynote address for the conference. He spoke of the marginalization of Africa in the mercantile and colonial system and how this marginalization has continued into the present-day global system. Dr. Owusu has published extensively on economic anthropology and on his native Ghana.

The 9th annual MAAAS conference will be hosted by the University of Kansas on Oct. 3-5, 2003. The theme of the conference will be "Teaching Africa: New Techniques, Themes, and Technologies". A call for papers will be circulated to the MAAAS constituency in the near future and will be mounted on the ASRC Web site.