Kansas African Studies Center’s 5th Annual

April 3, 2015

Morning Session:9:00 AM - 12:50 PMDivine Nine Room,

Kansas Union

Afternoon Session:1:00 PM- 5:00 PM

318 Bailey Hall

Reception: 5:00-6:00 pmOread Hotel

Cape Town, South Africa

Engage. Network. Converse.

Graduate Research WORKSHOP

ProgramMORNING SESSION: (Divine Nine Room, Kansas Union)

9:00-9:10 Breakfast and Welcome

9:10-9:50 The Bloodshed that Stopped the Rainfall: Villagers’ Experience of War and Hunger in Southern Mozambique; Marlino Eugénio Mubai, Dept. of History, University of Iowa

9:50-10:00 Break

10:00-10:40 Electoral Legitimacy in West Africa; Nate Daugherty, Dept. of Political Science, University of Missouri, St. Louis

10:40-11:20 Looking Back and Moving Forward: Can Africa Rest on Others’ Mat?; Mor Gueye, College of Education and Center for African Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

11:20-12:50 Lunch and Keynote Address by Dr. Jeremy Prestholdt, Department of History, University of California, San DiegoYou may purchase lunch from The Market (3rd Floor) and bring it to the Divine Nine Room

AFTERNOON SESSION (318 Bailey Hall)

1:00-2:10 Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) Panel 1Science and the (Meta)physical Body: A Critique of Positivism in the Vasconcelian Utopia; David Dalton, Dept. of Spanish and Portugese, University of KansasSouthern Citizens and Brazilian Benefactors: Brazilian Sponsorship of Southern Emigration, 1865-1877; Claire Wolnisty, Dept. of History, University of KansasReforestation Strategies in Rural Mexico; Aida Ramos, Dept. of Geography, University of Kansas

2:10-2:20 Break

2:20-3:40 KASC WorkshopUnbecoming to Become (Undone): Babamukuru’s Nervous Condition; Sarah Ngoh, Dept. of English, University of KansasDecolonizing Understandings of Rhetoric and Nation Building in the Work of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission; Lindsay Harroff, Dept. of Communication Studies, University of Kansas

3:40-3:50 Break

3:50-5:00 Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) Panel 2The Absence of Nationwide Political Parties Representing Mayan and Evangelical Christian Groups in Guatemala; Ryan Daugherty, Dept. of Political Science, University of KansasLooking for Ideal Places in the Amazon Basin: Scientific Expeditions in the Huallaga River during the Nineteenth Century; Ximena Sevilla, Dept. of History, University of Kansas

5:00-6:00 Informal Reception, Oread Hotel Bird Dog Bar

Abstract

The Bloodshed that Stopped the Rainfall: Villagers’ Experience of War and Hunger in Southern Mozambique

Marlino Eugénio Mubai Department of History

University of Iowa

This paper argues that the civil war and drought in Mozambique must be understood beyond national, regional and Cold War politics. It analyses the experiences of villagers who survived the combined impact of warfare and drought. It pays attention to the collateral effects of warfare by investigating the experience of villagers in dealing with violence, trauma, hunger, diseases and death. It also looks at villagers’ strategies of coping with warfare and drought and their collateral effects. It pays attention to social institutions on which villagers relied to cope with warfare and drought. It presents the population of the war zone not merely as victims but as innovators. In this way, it humanizes the war experience in Mozambique. The paper is organized in three sections: section one analyzes the relationship between warfare, drought, famine and disease. Section two looks at wartime as a period of innovation as villagers exploited opportunities brought about by war. The last section looks at the role of social institutions in helping villagers to cope with the effects of warfare and drought. Overall, the paper concludes that rural communities were the major players of the civil war in Mozambique. Thus, unlike previous studies of the civil war in Mozambique, this paper shifts the focus from international, regional and national to local experience of war and makes an attempt to hear experiences from people who survived from war and hunger.

Abstract

Electoral Legitimacy in West Africa

Nate Daugherty Department of Political Science

University of Missouri-St. Louis

Despite gaining their independence decades ago, many of the states of West Africa have struggled to establish and maintain democratic institutions. This paper focuses on the democratic consolidation that occurs in West Africa through the legitimation of elections as the appropriate path for governmental transitions. I seek to explain how key state institutions affect citizens’ perceptions of the legitimacy of national elections within their countries.

If holding elections that are seen as legitimate by the citizens of a country can contribute to consolidating democracy in that country, there are a few concrete institutions a West African government can advance to improve its citizens’ positive perceptions of the elections. Minimizing the restrictions on participation allows citizens the freedom to participate in campaigning and elections. This freedom to participate encourages citizens to feel that the elections are free and fair. Ensuring a competitive political environment where all (peaceful) groups are allowed to participate in all parts of the process also leads citizens to feel like the national elections are open to all and, thus, free and fair. The most effective way in West Africa to ensure that a government’s elections are seen as legitimate by its citizens is to invest in an electoral commission that can be trusted by its people to oversee the elections in a manner that keeps them free and fair. This result defines a direct relationship between perceptions of the elections and perceptions of the body that oversees the elections.

Abstract

Looking Back and Moving Forward: Can Africa Rest on Others’ Mat?

Mor GueyeCollege of Education and Center for African Studies

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The LMD (Licence-Master-Doctorat) crystalizes the reform process that already was taking place in a regional context of integration of higher education, a continental attempt to harmonize curriculum aspects as Africanization of educational content, and a difficult adaption to local realities.

In this paper, I argue that the introduction of the LMD system has been an abrupt and “violent” process of change that didn’t take into account the endogenous concerns of education perspectives in their full sense. The processes of construction of an “imported” reform have contributed to the de-structuring and negligence of another historical process of reform that seems to have dissolved itself in a merciless global trend. The half-imposed and half-accepted insertion of African universities into the current global trajectory of higher education has not learned enough from the historical legacy of the continent in reform strategies at the continental and sub-regional levels.

Second, I argue that a well-thought strategy based on endogenous development processes needs to be considered because the application of the Bologna process speaks more to the European experience than the various African historical, cultural, and social experiences. Third, I use the case of Senegal to analyze difficulties of adopting and implementing the Bologna process in public universities. The main arguments in this section refer to the unprepared nature of the introduction of the reform. This section is combined with an analysis of the situation in a broader sense regarding the continent.

LMD stands for Licence (BA), Master, Doctorat (Phd). It is the name given to the new reform of higher education that Senegal has adopted in the mid-2000s and has a lot of similarities with the globalization trend of the Bologna Process of 1999.

Abstract

Unbecoming to Become (Undone): Babamukuru’s Nervous Condition

Sarah Ngoh, Department of EnglishUniversity of Kansas

Since its publication in 1988, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, the first novel published in English by a Zimbabwean woman writer, has been widely accepted and critically analyzed as a feminist text addressing feminist concerns about gender inequity. The novel’s theme of ‘femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness’ (p.116) has led to a vast body of criticism focused on the novel’s female characters. My project acknowledges the productive benefits of using a feminist or female-focused framework for creating meaningful critical analyses of Nervous Conditions, and argues for an expansion of that framework that grapples with the novel’s male characters and their expressions of masculinity, a critically underdeveloped, yet essential component of any study of the novel. Because critical attention depicts male characters as agents of patriarchy, scholars have failed to address the role colonialism serves as a reinforcing agent in former traditional conceptions of gender and gender roles. This project focuses on the novel’s male characters, specifically the patriarch, Babamukuru, to underscore gender inequities by highlighting the role colonialism plays in the construction and (necessary) reconstruction of conceptions of gender. I offer an interpretation of Babamukuru’s character that seeks to complicate the notion that he is merely an agent of traditional patriarchy, a symbol of authority/power, or an extension of colonialism, and instead acknowledges the multiple, conflicting and overwhelming gender roles both colonialism and traditional Shona culture prescribe to him. This project explores these complexities in three ways: in Babamukuru’s response to his “god-like” status amongst his family, in an examination of his masculine characteristics, and in his interactions with his daughter Nyasha, and niece Tambudzai.

Abstract

Decolonizing Understandings of Rhetoric and Nation Building in the Work of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission

Lindsay Harroff, Department of Communication Studies

University of Kansas

Rhetorical scholars have long been interested in understanding rhetoric’s contribution to constructing and maintaining national identity and community. Working within an undeniably Western-dominated tradition and almost exclusively studying Western democratic contexts, however, this scholarship produces a narrow perception of national unity and the rhetoric that constitutes it. Specifically, theories privilege the construction of political communities through a rational attachment to a set of shared political practices and values, especially those of Western liberal democracy. In this paper, I study the role of truth telling in the work of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) to better understand the rhetorical construction of national unity and nationhood beyond this narrow focus. The TJRC was established in the wake of the 2007/2008 post-election violence to construct a comprehensive historical account of ethnic and political conflicts and human rights abuses throughout Kenya’s history as an independent nation and to “promote peace, justice, national unity, healing, and reconciliation.” To accomplish this task, the Commission invited witnesses to explain their own experiences, values, and beliefs. It referred to this act as “truth telling.” Truth telling, I argue, suggests new ways of understanding rhetoric, national community, and the relation between the two. Truth-telling requires expanding traditional Western notions of political rhetoric as rational, consensus-seeking deliberation to understand how it contributes to a community formed by relations among individuals rather than an attachment to the state and its established civic values.

Keynote Address

The Kansas African Studies Center (KASC) at the University of Kansas coordinates the study of Africa in the university and the wider region. The Center’s mission includes sponsoring research and outreach initiatives, enhancing the African Studies curriculum, organizing conferences, acquiring library and related resources, and raising funds to make these activities possible.

www.kasc.ku.eduThanks to the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies for their partnership and to Graduate Studies for their support of this event.

“Me Against the World: Tupac Shakur and Post-Cold War Alienation”

Dr. Jeremy PrestholdtDepartment of History

University of California, San Diego Jeremy Prestholdt specializes in African, Indian Ocean, and global history with emphases on consumer culture and politics. His first book, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (2008), addressed East African demands for imported goods and how these shaped global exchanges in the second half of the nineteenth century. His current research moves in two directions. One project addresses political culture, violence, and claims of autochthony—or ‘original’ habitation—at Kenya’s coast. A second project combines his interests in consumer culture and politics by exploring popular attraction to four of the world’s most ubiquitous icons: Che Guevara, Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur, and Osama bin Laden. Through the medium of popular heroes, the project traces the development of shared global imagery, highlights the mutability of common references, and charts the commodification of political sentiment since the 1960s. Dr. Prestholdt will present a dimension of this second book project about the history of antisystemic figures, The Global Icon: Cultural Politics and the Transnational Imagination since the Sixties. His talk at the workshop will focus on Tupac Shakur and Africa while touching on Tupac’s popularity in other parts of the world.

Sponsorship