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Welcome to the Abstracts and Bios section! Click on the letter range to the right to find the Abstract or Panelist you desire. Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z
The Eroticization of Bikutsi: University of Texas at Austin Dennis M. Rathnaw holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan and a Master of Music from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at Texas, focusing on West and Central African popular music. His research includes the interaction between media and politics in the production of popular music, most notably bikutsi music in Cameroon. He is specifically interested in people’s creative use of, and response to, global media. Rathnaw founded the Austin, Texas afro pop band Easy Motion Tourist.
Dr. Anita Rosenblithe Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo and Maishe Maponya’s Gangsters: Professor, English
Devil Worship as a Moral Discourse on Youth in Kenya Expository Writing Program David Samper, currently an instructor in the Expository Writing Program at The University of Oklahoma, received his doctorate in Folklore and Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002. His dissertation on Kenyan youth culture investigated the use of an argotic register, Sheng, in the construction of personal and group identity. He has also conducted research on rap music and personal experience narratives in Kenya. Youth culture and praxis in Kenya, as well as around the world, continues to be David’s research focus.
Steven Salm, PhD. National Politics and Urban Resistance in Accra: Ga Shifimo Kpee and the Tokyo Joes Steven J. Salm is an Assistant Professor of History at Xavier University of Louisiana. His research focus is twentieth century urban history and culture and he has conducted fieldwork in several West African countries, including Ghana and Sierra Leone. His present work investigates the development of youth subcultures in Accra, Ghana, since the Second World War by addressing the changing dynamics of globalization, cultural consumption, and identity transformation. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, presented research papers at major conferences, and published chapters and articles on a wide range of topics such as gender, youth, music, literature, religion, and popular culture. His writings have appeared in Africa Today, African Economic History, and African Historical Research:
The Role of Vernacular in The Game of Forgetting PhD Student in the Comparative Literature Program Johanna Sellman is a PhD student in the department of Comparative Literature at
the University of Texas. Her interests include contemporary literature of the
Arab world and Africa, as well as testimonial writing, language ideology, and
human rights texts. She completed her MA at the University of Texas in Middle
Eastern Studies. Her MA thesis examined the recent reconciliation proceedings
Ibra Sene Religion Performance, Youth, and Cultural Identity: Michigan State University Ibra Sene is a PhD candidate in African History, at Michigan State
University. He is currently completing his dissertation titled "Crime,
Simone Sessolo Other Monsters: Gender Complexities of (Femi/woma/stiwa)nism in PhD Student in the Comparative Literature Program Simone Sessolo is a PhD student in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Texas at Austin. He focuses on postcolonialism and cultural studies. Simone Sessolo earned a "Laurea" in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Padova, Italy, in 2002, and an MA in English and Literary Theory at the University of Kansas in 2006. He has published an article on Virginia Woolf ("Bernard: The Occult Narrator of 'The Waves'?") and an article on Henry Roth ("When Maturity Has Its Tongue: The Linguistic Alteration in Roth's 'Call It Sleep'), both published in the Atti e Memorie of the Galileiana Academy of Arts and Sciences in Padova, Italy. He is currently an Assistant Instructor in the French and Italian Department at UT Austin.
The Re(Public) of Salsa: Afro-Cuban Music in Fin-de-Siecle Dakar School of Liberal Arts Richard M. Shain is Associate Professor of History and Area Studies at Philadelphia University. He was trained as an oral historian and now works as a cultural historian. He has taught for nearly a decade in Nigerian and Senegalese universities His most recent major publication is the co-edited volume The Spatial Factor in African History (2004). He has done extensive research on the history of African ‘traditional’ religion and sacral kingship in Central Nigeria. His current project is a book length manuscript, “Roots in Reverse”, which explores the relationship between Afro-Cuban music and modernity in Senegal.
Michael Sharp, Ph.D The Influence of African Popular Culture on the Anglophone Caribbean: Professor
Florence Sipalla Najivunia kuwa Mkenya: Constructing nationalist identity the popular way Florence Sipalla holds an M.A (African Literature) from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Her research interests are in popular culture, african film & literature, gender studies and social marketing with a particular interest in the use of popular youth culture in HIV/AIDS campaigns.
Batamaka Some Singing, Dancing and Acting as at Home: Department of Anthropology
Sarah Steinbock-Pratt The Lions in the Jungle: Representations of Africa and Africans in American Cinema University of Texas at Austin
Performing Custom as Popular Culture in Ghana: Indiana University
Elinami Veraeli Swai (D.Ed) Silence and helpless Whispers: Assistant Professor of Women Studies & Multicultural Education Elinami Veraeli Swai received her D. (Ed) in Adult Education and Women Studies from The Pennsylvania State University, USA. She also holds B (Ed) (Honors) and M (Ed) degrees from the University of Dar-Es-Salaam Tanzania. She is currently teaching Women Studies and Multicultural Education at Central Washington University. She has made several presentations at national and international conferences. Elinami has written and contributed chapters in books such as Moses Oketch and Maurice Amutabi (Eds.). The Distance Future: Perspectives on Lifelong Learning in Africa (Forthcoming, London: Kluwer, 2007). K; Fassil Demissie, (Ed.). Colonial Architecture and Urbanism: Intertwined and Contested (Forthcoming from Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2007); Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton, (2006). (Eds.). Endangered Bodies: Women, Children and Health in Africa. Trenton: Africa World Press.
The advent of entertainment Department of French Alexie Tcheuyap is Associate Professor of Francophone Studies in the Department of French at the University of Toronto. He has published Esthétique et folie dans l’œuvre romanesque de pius Ngandu Nkashama (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon (Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 2005) and De l’écrit à l’écran. Les réécritures filmiques du roman africain francophone (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005). He has also authored several articles and edited journal issues on literary theory, francophone literatures and films. He is currently on a project relating to new languages and representations in post-1990 African cinemas.
Confessional popular songs and the quest for authenticity in postcolonial PhD candidate.
Dennis Teghtegh Popular Culture as a Metaphor for Resistance: The Kwagh-hir Theatre Experience Department of Theatre Arts
From primitive to popular culture: why Kant never made it to Africa.
Lincoln Theo Queering Africa: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of African Consultant and Coach Lincoln Theo is a life skills coach and consultant in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a non-practising attorney, has a Masters Degree in Social Science in African Studies from the University of Cape Town. He is currently a PhD student at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of the Western Cape, researching relationships between theories of chaos, complexity & complex adaptive systems and queer theory. He taught film & cultural studies, scriptwriting and producing at a Cape Town film school for a number of years after working in the commercial sphere as an attorney and media industry consultant, and has a particular interest in gender, sexuality, sexual orientation and the modified body as discursive canvas. His interests include body modification and popular culture, bonsais and gardening.
Katrina Daly Thompson Rap, Cartoons and Rap Cartoon: Katrina Daly Thompson is Professor in Residence, Linguistics, at UCLA, and also serves as the African Languages Coordinator to the James S. Coleman African Studies Center. Specializing in Swahili and Shona languages and cultures, Thompson's research focuses on popular culture and the verbal arts in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Roberta K. Timothy Resistance Education: Activism in Popular Culture PhD Candidate in the Department of Adult Education Roberta K. Timothy is a 33 year old, activist, poet, and African woman of Caribbean descent living in Toronto, Canada. Her activist, academic, professional and work background all focus on feminist, anti-colonial, anti-racist praxis, through the use of anti-oppression methodologies, the arts, and other politic tools of resistance. Hélène Tissières Dak’Art, Biennale of Contemporary African art: University of Texas at Austin Hélène Tissières is Assistant Professor of African Literatures written in French at the University of Texas. Her forthcoming book, Ecritures en transhumance entre Maghreb et Afrique subsaharienne to be published in Spring 2007 by L’Harmattan, puts forward several innovative and rarely investigated circulations: geographic, between North and sub-Saharan Africa; cultural, between orality and writing; aesthetic, between literature and painting. In 2003 she received a Fulbright research / lecturer grant and taught for a year and a half at the University Cheick Anta Diop in Dakar. Dr. Tissières also holds a degree in painting and her interests in Visual Arts have brought her to closely follow the Dakar biennale on which she has published several articles in Ethiopiques and Research in African Literatures. Presently, she is working on Senegalese writers, painters and filmmakers.
Revisiting Country Music in Zimbabwe to Reflect Jakarta Institute of the Arts Jonathan Zilberg is a cultural anthropologist with field research and museum experience in Latin America, America, Europe, Africa and Asia (1983-present). He earned a B.A. at The University of Texas at Austin in 1983 with a major in molecular biology and a minor in biochemistry and then a Ph.D. in symbolic anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a thesis titled Zimbabwean Stone Sculpture: The Invention of a Shona Tradition (1996). His current research is on the Indonesian reaction to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and on the nexus of archaeology and fashion in Indonesia. He continues to conduct research and write on the hidden connections between modern art history and modern Zimbabwean art as well as on Zimbabwean popular culture. Some of his articles include: “A New Theory and Method for the Study of Tourist Art: Variation and Innovation in Zimbabwean Flow Sculpture” in The Quality of Social Existence in a Globalizing World. XVI World Congress of Sociology (2006) Durban: Conference Papers on CD-Rom; "Shona Sculpture and Documenta 2001: Reflections on Exclusions" in Matatu: African Cultures, Visual Arts and the Museum (2002); "The Radical within the Museum: Frank McEwen and the Genesis of Shona Sculpture as a Cultural Struggle at the Rhodes National Gallery" in Kunst aus Zimbabwe - Kunst in Zimbabwe (2001); "The Africa Project" Kate Kuper, Jonathan Zilberg and Sandra Bales in Art Education (Special Issue: How History Can Come Together as Art) 3(2):18-24; "Using the African Collection at Illinois State University as a Resource for Teaching and Research" in The Africa Collection. CD-ROM (1998); "Water Spirits, Shona Culture and Shona Sculpture" at http://www.cyberworkers.com
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