Series Collaboration Highlights Africa's Diversity

KENT, OH - As part of a new collaboration with Cuyahoga Community College’s (Tri-C) Office of Student Life, Kent State University’s Department of Pan-African Studies presents a panel lecture “West African Muslim Societies and their Contributions to World and U.S. Culture” as part of the 2011-2012 Pan-African Studies lecture series at Kent State. The series, titled “Cosmopolitanism and Diversity in the African World,” benefits from support of the Ohio Humanities Council and the West African Research Association (WARA). The first lecture at Tri–C is being funded by WARA and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers through a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

“West African Muslim Societies and their Contributions to World and U.S. Culture” will take place Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. at Tri-C’s Eastern Campus in its new Health Careers and Sciences Building and on Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. at the second floor Lecture Hall in Oscar Ritchie Hall on the Kent State campus. Both events are free and open to the public.

The program includes a panel of scholars, including Dr. Fallou Ngom, associate professor and director of the African Languages Program at Boston University; Dr. Ousseina Alidou, director of the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University; and Dr. Erin Augis, associate professor of sociology at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Wendy Wilson-Fall, chair and associate professor of Kent State’s Department of Pan-African Studies.

Topics that will be discussed during the program include:
• West African Intellectual Tradition and Ajami (traditions of writing African languages in Arabic)
• A Comparative Study of Muslim African Women in Niger and Kenya
• Urban and Immigrant African Muslim Women and Youth
• Historical and cultural connections between North America and Muslim West Africa

“The goal of the program is to provide more understanding of a new sector of immigrants to the United States: West Africans, among whom a good percentage is Muslim,” Wilson-Fall said. “We’ll look at cultural differences between West Africans and Arabs, and also national origins.

“We expect this to be the first of several more collaborations between Pan-African Studies and Tri-C’s Eastern Campus,” Wilson-Fall added.

“Cosmopolitanism and Diversity in the African World” is made possible through a grant from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers to the West African Research Association, which selected Kent State’s Department of Pan-African Studies as the beneficiary partner