African Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Acts Of Subjugation And Repatriation Of Africa And Its People Through The Viewfinder, Mariah Morales

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Monuments, Movements, & Memory: The Visual And Spatial Implications Of The Shooting At Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Megan G. Zembower

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

This paper focuses on the dichotomous relationship of race relations and visual culture in the American South, with a particular focus on the shooting of nine black Americans at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015 by Caucasian South Carolinian Dylann Roof. Prior to the shooting, Roof posted images of himself posed in front of various Confederate landmarks in South Carolina to online social media platforms. Using these images as evidence, I contend that Roof’s racist motivation for the crime was, in part, fostered by the surrounding environment that memorializes fallen Confederate soldiers …

Vohou-Vohou: A Search For Post-Colonial Cultural Identity In Cote D’Ivoire, Olivia Keefer

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

This paper addresses the Vohou-Vohou movement (1970s-1980s) in Cote d’Ivoire. Through an explanation of the region’s history, the paper brings to light the motivations of the movement and its founders. The work of Youssouf Bath, Théodore Koudougnon, and Kra Nguessan are the focus of this paper to represent the movement’s style, formation, and impact on Cote d’Ivoire culture. Vohou-Vohou developed a decade after Cote d’Ivoire gained independence from French colonial control, and the movement became an inward return to local culture. The artists had an interest in rejecting the West. A visual representation of the rejection is seen through Vohou-Vohou …

Painting Photographs: Absence On Mohammed Mahmoud Street, Kirsten Stricker

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

The Egyptian Revolution prompted an outpouring of art. It filled the streets of Cairo, a city that had lacked any street art prior to the revolution, with large murals and art of every kind. Ammar Abo Bakr says that his massive murals are not art — they are news. His works are a protest against the censorship and selective reporting of the mainstream media. Bakr is best known for his large mural on Mohammed Mahmoud Street near Tahrir Square, Cairo. The mural is massive and contains many elements. One element consists of paintings of mothers holding photographs of their children …

Rethinking The "Anonymous:" Simeon Agbetuyi And The Yoruba Example, Caroline Bastian

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

In looking at “Traditional” and “Contemporary” African Art, it is clear Western culture still struggles with recognition of the individual African artist. For example, most museum exhibitions displaying local or more continent-based African art still tend to embody a flawed sense of “traditional” art created by a culture rather than an individual. In contrast, contemporary African art stresses the importance of the singular artist, their personal style, historical context, and cultural motivation. Part of the problem stems from colonialism, when many Western “collectors” seized any art they deemed valuable and “exotic,” taking it away from context leaving behind all information …

The Essence Of Bogolanfini: Thinking About Ethical Design With African Inspiration, Sierra N. Bailey-Van Kuren

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Bogolanfini are intricately designed textiles created by Bamana women in Mali. The cloths are created through a natural process, producing rich designs and motifs that address stories, narratives, female-specific ideas or relate to historical events. Each textile is hand made for a particular individual and given to her as she enters adulthood, an event marked by puberty and clitoridectomy. During this time, the cloth is used to absorb blood from the operation, a process transferring the woman’s spirit into the bogolanfini. As she progresses through life, the utility of her bogolanfini extends to absorbing her life-blood during menstruation, first intercourse …

African Mask Display In Context, Elise C. Aronson

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

African masquerade is deeply interconnected with the community in which it performs. However, in Western-based exhibition display, the mask becomes the sole object of scrutiny and interest, decontextualizing it from its holistic dimension and multi-media interface. In fact, much of masquerade’s cultural significance is lost if the dynamic multimedia display of which the mask is part becomes alienated from its holistic context, reducing it to a mere static object hung on a wall. The argument can be raised, to mount a mask on a white wall or behind glass, especially grouped among other masks from Africa, as many museums do, …

Renee Green: Combination Artist, Cail P. Lininger

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Renée Green, a combination artist, engages viewers in multi-faceted and diverse topics without directly addressing the central theme. In Partially Buried In Three Parts (1991-1996), Green utilizes films shot in a “home-movie” fashion and site-specific archiving to curate complex dialogues across three different locations: Kent State in 1991, exploring the shootings in 1970 and Robert Smithson’s installation, Partially Buried Woodshed; Germany and the United States and what it means to be a displaced national undergoing culture shock; and Korea, in war and peace. Green originally displayed all three in an installation designed to invoke feelings of nostalgia amidst confusion regarding …

Mediated Sankarism: Re-Inventing A Historical Figure To Reimagine A Future, Lassane Ouedraogo

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Thomas Sankara has contributed significantly to the formation of the modern national identity of post-independent Burkina Faso before his assassination in 1987. This essay used discourse analysis to examine the emergence of Thomas Sankara’s ideology also known as Sankarism (and his praxis?) in the Burkinabe public discourse. In the current socio-political context of a nascent democracy characterized by the emergence of active civil society movements and multiple political factions contesting the right to govern and claiming the capacity to provide a new direction to a country caught up amid local and global issues, the reinvention and re-appropriation of Sankarism call …

Media In The Murid World: Analysis Of Inscribed Faith And Religious Identity In Murid Agencies’ Media Approach, Macodou Fall

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Previous studies about Muridiyya have mostly focused on the economic and political influences of the Senegalese Sufi Islamic Brotherhood founded by Shaykh Amadu Bamba at the end of 19^th century. At the beginning, Muridiyya was a reactive force to colonialism and it aimed to propose alternatives to Western cultural and economic domination. However, the rapid growth of Muridiyya was possible via the creation of decentralized Murid organizations and groups called dahiras (religious associations). Prior to the rise of dahiras, Murid’s religious ideology spread throughout daaras (Quranic schools), which intended to initiate Murid talibes (disciples) to Islam and the …

What To Keep, What To Let Go: The Case Of Indians From Nyasaland, Debra Nicholson

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

This paper examines how identity may be constructed in the case of multiple transnational migrations within just a couple of generations, using an example (or examples) of immigrants from India to Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) to Great Britain to Canada.

What happens to your sense of identity when your Indian ancestors emigrate to Nyasaland, you grow up there, but around 1964, soon after independence from Great Britain, all Indians, including you and your family, are deported from your homeland of Nyasaland?

In one case study analyzed in this paper, a Nyasa Catholic woman of Indian descent first travels to Great Britain …

The African Immigrant Experience In France According To "La Haine", Samantha B. Weiss

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Le Haine depicts the fictional experiences of three immigrants to France, each with a different background, but a similar fate. The title, which translates to "hate" sets the tone for the movie, which is quick to explain its motives – depicting the life of a French migrant as a hopeless, fruitless one. Though the African character - his home nation never named - can speak perfect French and even attempts to better the lives of those around him, his efforts are met with violence, hatred, resistance, and an anti-immigrant mentality. By reading the conflicts of the movie in reference to …

Fighting The Lion: Nationalist Masculinity In Sam Nujoma's Autobiography, Kelly J. Fulkerson Dikuua

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Dr. Samuel Nujoma’s autobiography, Where Others Wavered: My Life in SWAPO and My Participation in the Liberation Struggle, documents his life as a pivotal figure in the Namibian war for independence leading to his tenure as the first president of Namibia (1990-2005). Nujoma, known as the “Founding Father” of Namibia, occupies a larger-than-life sphere within the public imagination through monuments, public photographs, placards and street names. Nujoma’s autobiography prescribes a certain type of national citizenship that details a specific construction of masculinity for Namibian men. This paper analyzes his autobiography, arguing that Nujoma constructs a hegemonic masculinity based on four …

Andrew Jackson And Harriet Tubman: A Monstrous Intimacy, Sheneese Thompson

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

In the wake of the announcement of Harriet Tubman joining Andrew Jackson on the back of the twenty-dollar bill, as well as the recent election of Donald Trump as the nation’s 45^th president, this paper employs Christina Sharpe’s notion of monstrous intimacies to assert that the coupling of the two on the bill reinscribes the monstrosity of the intimate encounters between the enslaved and their masters, even though Jackson did not own Tubman herself. Further, the appropriation of Tubman’s image and the revisionist underpinnings of her inclusion on money, once offered for her bounty, serves no other purpose than …

Identity Performance: African-Caribbean Artists As Creators Of Cultural Community, Jessica Allison

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Identity performance is an aspect of everyday life and can be seen in an individual's daily routines, or even the way they present themselves in specific social situations. These performances of identity can also be displayed in the actions one puts in to a piece of art. In African-Caribbean societies artists have become aware of the importance identity holds for their community and many of them put these ideas in to their artwork. The conscious decisions that these artists make in the creation and display of their artworks act as performances of an identity that they are attempting to convey. …

Theories Of Space And Place In Abstract Caribbean Art, Shelby Miller

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

How can one define the concepts of space and place and further translate those theories to the Caribbean region? Through abstract modes of representation, artists from these islands can shed light on these concepts in their work. Involute theories can be discussed in order to illuminate the larger Caribbean space and all of its components in abstract art. The trialectics of space theory deals with three important factors that include the physical, cognitive, and experienced space. All three of these aspects can be displayed in abstract artwork from this region. By analyzing this theory, one can understand why Caribbean artists …

African Resistance To European Colonial Aggression: An Assessment, Nigel Tussing

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

When observing African resistance to colonialism one plainly sees that there was quite a bit of non-military resistance. However, military resistance played a large role in helping the cause of the native people of Africa. It had success such as Ethiopia’s ability to remain independent and the Chilembwe insurrection; it also had its failures such as lack of technology and lack of unity. Through careful examination of these ideas we can further understand the success and failure of African military resistance to colonialism.

Impact Of Colonialism On Contemporary African Art, Jayna Clemens

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton

Studying history provides insight and explanations for what is present in today’s society. Colonization is not the only piece of Africa’s history, but it is a major contributor. Studying the history of Africa, pre and post colonialism, provides explanations for how Africa arrived at its present and where it is headed in the future. Colonization had a major impact on Africa’s culture and history, including contemporary African art. Contemporary African art, including description, materials, …

European Colonialism And The Formation Of New African Identity, Isha Nabay

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

European colonialism left a devastating effects on Africa. The exploitation of the vast continent began with the slave trade which robbed Africa millions of people. The abolition of the slave trade witnessed the beginning of legitimate trade, which, in turn ushered in direct European invasion, conquest and establishment of colonial rule in Africa. Under colonialism, human rights were extensively violated for decades, African kings and chiefs lost their power to European rulers who imposed their own laws and customs to keep the people of the land degraded and exploited. Some high points of European influence include the introduction of Christianity …

European Christian Evangelism And Cultural Erasure In Colonial Africa, Jessica Ricker

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

It is often argued that the colonization of the African continent in the 19^th and 20^th century was only made possible through the use of professional military infiltration. While the use of a professional military force is one of the ways in which Europeans colonized African territories, it is not the only way. In addition to military force, many Europeans utilized Christian evangelism and cultural erasure as a means of pacification. Many arguments made about colonialism in Africa point to evangelism and cultural erasure as goals of European imperialism, while other arguments boast that the European powers only …

Prospero's Monsters: Authenticity, Identity, And Hybridity In The Post-Colonial Age, Dominique Pen

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Between April 17^th and May 17^th, 2008, London-born, Nigerian-raised artist Yinka Shonibare’s work was exhibited at the James Cohan Gallery in New York City in a show entitled Prospero’s Monsters. The show was organized into three galleries – “La Méduse”, “The Age of Enlightenment” and “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” – each of which contained works of the same name. This study will focus on the bookends of the show, the first and last galleries, which consisted of seven works in total, in the first: the La Méduse multimedia sculpture/diorama and chromogenic print and in …

Developing Perceptions: Definitions Of Self In African Portrait Photography, Bridget K. Garnai

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

“Developing Perceptions: Definitions of Self in African Portrait Photography”

Photography is a relatively new medium in the art world, and within this world, African photography is consistently excluded from the predominantly Western canon. Despite its introduction to Africa as a mechanism of colonialism, African photography carries with it distinct messages expressing Africa’s experience and global relationship with the world. In the cases of King Njoya, Seydou Keita, and Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, photography defines itself against the oppressive colonial and postcolonial modes of representation. In doing so, these examples of African portrait photography seek to capture a space that I refer …

Walk Next To The Wall: Images Of Martyrs In The Egyptian Revolution, Kirsten Stricker

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Prior to the Egyptian revolution citizens of Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt are taught to “walk next to the wall”; a phrase that means keep your head down, mind your own business, do not meddle in the affairs of those who outrank you, and feed your family. In the end, walking next to the wall is not enough to save them. They can no longer escape attention by blending into the walls of their cities. Khaled Said is not the first young man to die at the hands of Cairo’s police, nor is he the last. Said’s death could not be swept …

Reframe, Reuse, Recycle: The Found Object In Post-Colonial Africa, Recontextualized By Contemporary Artists, Hanna L. Stanhouse

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

In his essay, “The cultural biography of things,” Igor Kopytoff writes about the ways in which objects have and develop cultural biographies. From the time of their creation, and subsequent adoption into society, man-made objects acquire “social lives” through the various economic, historic, environmental and political intensities in which they “experience.” Current trends for global contemporary artists, especially those working from an African sensibility, explore the materiality of objects, examining their layered identities and social lives. Artists thus consider how materials have loaded and layered histories and biographies. While economic factors force consumers to reuse, it is the creative impulse …

Christianity As A Double-Edged Sword In Colonial Africa, Brian Schmidt

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Christian missionaries were among the first Europeans to move into Africa. They came on a mission to save the souls of a seemingly primitive population, an attitude that was further enabled and encouraged by recently developed ethnocentric philosophies of "scientific racism." Within this social climate, missionaries not only felt obligated to assimilate Africans toward Christian religious practice, but also toward European ways of living. The result, coincidentally or not, was an undermining of African culture that is thought by many scholars to have aided in the successful takeover by colonial governments in the region. Christian virtues of passivity and humility …

Blood Ivory: The Story Of Illegal Poaching And Its Global Influence, Alanna Demers

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Illegal animal product trade such as the trade of ivory and rhinoceros horn has become a problem that influences the entire world. Throughout history, from pre-colonial times to modern day, illicit trade in ivory and rhino horn have drastically affected Africa’s development, eco-system, and society. The decline in the rhinoceros and elephant populations on the African continent drastically effect vegetation, which directly correlates with agriculture and the health of people and animals. The history of the illegal ivory and rhino horn trade is complicated, and provides an essential context in order to understand the modern day situation. Scholarly works and …

The Impact Of The Second World War On The Decolonization Of Africa, Erin Myrice

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

This project discusses the Second World War as a catalyst for African political freedom and independence. The war helped build strong African nationalism, which resulted in a common goal for all Africans to fight for their freedom. World War II led to decolonization of Africa by affecting both Europe and Africa militarily, psychologically, politically, and economically. The Second World War was instrumental in arming Africans with the military knowledge and leadership skills they would utilize when fighting for their own independence. One of these skills included the ability to communicate and work together, which had previously been an issue among …

Germaine Tillion's Colonial Writing: Complicity And Resistance, Elizabeth Adamo

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Germaine Tillion's Colonial Writing: Complicity and Resistance

Abstract Submitted by: Elizabeth Adamo

M.A. Candidate, French and History, 2015

During the Algerian War, many intellectuals in France and Algeria voiced their opinions on the infamous “Algerian Question.” Rejected by both the Right and the Left in France, Germaine’s political and moral views evoked many emotions because of the parallels she drew between her experience in a Nazi concentration camp and the treatment of Muslim Algerians during this polarizing war. Although this theme has been explored in depth by other scholars, none have yet enquired into her complicity and strategies of resistance …

Truth Games: Negotiating Power, Identity And The Spirit Of Resistance In Contemporary South African Art, Dominique Pen

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

Sue Williamson has come to hold an esteemed and influential role in the South African art world not only for her literary gifts as the author of several books about South African art (perhaps most notably her first book, Resistance Art in South Africa, published in 1989), but also as an artist whose work often deals with the social, political, and conceptual repercussions of apartheid in South Africa. Indeed, much of her development as an artist stemmed from her activism during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa beginning in the late 1970’s and has evolved to include the contemporary …

Made In Ethiopia?, Janet M. Purdy

Africana Studies Student Research Conference

This paper provides an overview of historical textile production in Ethiopia through a visual analysis of regional style and motif variations, with a subtext consideration of the new developments and possibilities that surround the growing interest in Ethiopia’s emerging role in the global textile industry.

In many ways Ethiopian textiles as part of art history remain understudied or at least under-published, and accordingly, without the benefit of primary research, the scope of this paper is general in nature. Combined with historical and visual analysis based on secondary sources, consideration is also given to recently published information by organizations including The …