African Studies Visiting Research Fellowships Scheme 2006-2007
Africa and the Atlantic World, 1500 to the Present
Africa and the Americas have been in continual interaction over the last five centuries. More Africans than Europeans crossed the Atlantic to the 'New World' before 1800, and they shaped in critical ways the environment, economy, politics, language, music, religion, and visual arts of societies across the entire Western hemisphere from Argentina north to Canada. At the same time, influences moved too in the reverse direction, with plants like cassava and cacao, Caribbean Baptist and Pentecostal Christianity, Pan African political ideology, New York hair and dance styles, becoming integrated into the matrix of African life. The Centre of African Studies invites applicants for its Research Fellowships who propose to research into Africa's participation in the experience of the Atlantic world since 1500. Fellows may choose to work on the impact of Africa on the New World, or of the New World on Africa, or both; they may wish to use methods and problems drawn from any discipline of the human sciences. Applicants whose work cuts across the boundaries of the nation state will be particularly at an advantage.
Elected Fellows
Research work: History of Adweso-Abogiri and their centuries old legacy – Bone setting. Prophet Jemisimiham Jehu-Appiah: The man, his vision and work
Pneumonia and Labour Conditions at Roan Antelope Mine, 1922-1945, Pre-Colonial Education in Africa, African Health at Roan Antelope Mine during the Second World War, A Zambian’s Glimpse of the Danish Education System
The Face of Alexandria – the Face of Africa?,Performance of Greek Tragedy in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe,The Role of Music in Daphnis and Chloe, Sculpture at Heroes’ Acre, Harare; Classical Influences?
Transformed Identities: Cultural Transgression and Postcolonial Transformation in Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ngugi wa Mirii’s ‘I Will Marry When I Want’
Research Seminars
Michaelmas 2006
Convened by Dr Richard Drayton, mentor for the Visiting Fellows programme 2006-2007, at Corpus Christi College.
In Michaelmas 2006, the four fellows participated in a research seminar on Africa and the Atlantic World, convened by Dr Richard Drayton, mentor for the Visiting Fellows programme 2006-7, at Corpus Christi College. They received papers from four scholars:
- Professor Richmond Ackam (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana), African-American Art and the Legacies of the Slave Trade
- Professor Molara Ogundipe, The Sacred and the Feminine: An African Response to Julia Kristeva and Catherine Clement
- Professor Jerry Handler (University of Virginia), Africa in the New World
- William St Clair (Trinity), Cape Coast Castle and the West African Slave Trade
In Lent 2007
The fellows participated in the many activities organised around the university for the bicentenary anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, and for the 50th anniversary of the independence of Ghana.
In March 2007
The fellows made a presentation of their research over the previous six months at a workshop at Corpus Christi College.