Keynote Speaker Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch

Friday, March 28, 7:00 p.m.

Venue: Flawn Academic Center (next to the Union), Room 21

Chair: Joni L. Jones

Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch is Professor emeritus of modern African History at the University Paris-7-Denis-Diderot, and Adjunct Professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York, Department of Sociology. She trained numerous French speaking African historians in Paris and in African universities. She has published many books, among which two were translated into English: Africa South of the Sahara, Endurance and Change, the University of California Press (1987), and African Women, a Modern History, Westview Press (1998). A third one is forthcoming: African Urbanization from the Beginnings to Colonialism, Markus Wiener, Princeton. She has edited more than twenty books on African studies and the third world and received the 1999 “ASA (African Studies Association) Distinguished Africanist Award” in Philadelphia. She has been a member (2000-2005) of the ICHS (International Conference of Historical Sciences) international Bureau since August 2000.

JONI L. JONES is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance, and Associate Director of the Center for African and African-American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her master’s degree in Oral Interpretation from Northwestern University and her doctorate in Educational Theatre from New York University. Dr. Jones is an artist/scholar who is currently engaged in performance ethnography and videography around the Yoruba deity Osun. In Austin, Texas and Washington, D.C. she has received acting awards for her work in professional theatre. Her articles on performance and identity have appeared in Text and Performance Quarterly, The Drama Review, Theatre Topics, and Black Theatre News. Her performance scholarship includes Searching for Osun, sista docta, Broken Circles: A Journey Through Africa and the Self, and Wild Women and Rolling Stones. While on a Fulbright Fellowship in Nigeria (1997-98), Dr. Jones taught at Obafemi Awolowo University and contributed Theatre for Social Change workshops for the Forum on Governance and Democracy in Ile-Ife. Her dramaturgical work includes con flama for Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, Texas, Clay Angels for New WORLD Theatre in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery and Pill Hill for First Stage Productions in Austin, Texas. She continues to perform her performance art critique of the academy entitled "sista docta" on the academic circuit. Dr. Jones is also the proud mother of a sophomore at Temple University.