by Austin Bryan, anthropology, graduate student, Northwestern University
This article originally ran in the PAS Newsletter, Spring 2021, Volume 31, Number 3
The Africa Seminar (Afrisem) will hold its annual graduate student conference in June on the theme “Africanist Knowledge that Agitates” as a webinar on the conferencing platform Zoom for the second year due to the Covid-19 virus. The conference brings two thought leaders on Africanist knowledge and practice, Kwame Otu and Frank Mugisha, into conversation with one another for the first time as keynote speakers
Kwame E. Otu,
Source: https://woodson.as.virginia.edu/people/profile/eko3q
Kwame Otu is assistant professor of African and African American studies at The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. An anthropologist by training, Otu’s work engages with gender and sexuality studies; diaspora studies; race and ethnicity; affect and aesthetics; performance; human rights; and afrofuturism, neoliberalism, and postcolonialism. He is also a filmmaker and wrote the script for the film Reluctantly Queer that premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2016. He critically examines the first LGBT film produced by an African filmmaker in his recent article, “Heteroerotic Failure and ‘Afro-queer Futurity’ in Mohamed Camara’s Dakan,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 33 (2021). In addition, Otu has also published articles in Critical Ethnic Studies, Sexualities, and the Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies. Currently, he is working on an ethnographic book project on sassoi, or self-identified effeminate men, navigating homophobia in postcolonial Ghana.
Frank Mugisha, Source: https://ug.linkedin.com/in/frankmugisha
Frank Mugisha is one of the most prominent campaigners for LGBT rights in Uganda. He is the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, an NGO that promotes the liberation of queer people in Uganda. He has won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Prize and Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize in 2011 for his activist work. In 2014, Mugisha was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ghent. Mugisha’s essays have appeared in international newspapers and journals, such as the New York Times, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy. He has also been featured in important documentary films, including Call Me Kuchu and And Still We Rise.
The conference begins on Thursday, June 10, with welcoming events for participants, including a brief presentation on the launch of the new Afrisem website developed by Northwestern graduate students. Keynote remarks from Otu in Charlottesville, Virginia and Mugisha in Kampala, Uganda will take place Friday, June 11, at 10am, followed by a panel discussion and a Q&A with the audience. After the lunch break, student presentations continue for the rest of the day, and the following morning.
Despite the difficulties of living with the global pandemic we are excited with Afrisem’s progress throughout the year. In the Winter Quarter, we hosted two graduate student presentations: Colin Bos examined the evolution of legal concepts concerning cultural objects in Nigeria,1930s–1970s; and Emma Kennedy analyzed the entanglement of Indigeneity and Blackness in “Blackboy,” the artwork by Dale Harding from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent PAS alumus Andrew Wooyoung Kim (anthropology ’20) organized and moderated a panel of Africianists working in academia, including Ashley Ngozi Agbasoga, Delali Kumavie, and Mlondi Zondi, who reflected on their experiences in the U.S. job market and made their panel video recording openly accessible. Finally, the Afrisem digital committee has met throughout the year to develop an independent website using ‘NU Sites’ to host projects that may include the organization and digitization of past conference programs, the development of a blog, and the creation of a professional Vimeo for public and private dissemination of video archive content. Members of the committee include Sasha Artamonova, Shelby Mohr, Anisha Bhat, Angela Tate, and myself.
As our digital lives have now become bombarded with many requests to attend exciting talks, don’t forget about joining The Africa Seminar here at home.