Welcome, or as the Ibibio of Nigeria say, Emedi, which is incindentally the language of our inaugural Ama Ata Aidoo Visiting Arts Fellow, Wana Udubong. We’re at the beginning of a new academic year, and it feels that we
are all at the beginning of a new integration. What do I mean? The past two, going on three. years of COVID, have created immeasurable loss and isolation and have taken a deep toll on each of us individually and in our various communities. A lot of fragmentation. Fragmentation and reintegration are essential processes when dealing with change, something we from the continent know well. Here at the Program of African Studies,
we continue to focus on knitting new frameworks for our work.
Recently someone asked me if I could boil down to a short sentence what I feel our mission at the program is. In reviewing our actions since I took leadership, I responded with – fostering and curating decolonized, vibrant, diverse, and sustainable knowledge communities around Africa and the study of Africa. It sounded like a big challenge, something almost unachievable. But it is what we have done and what we are doing. We started with virtual events with Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka who spoke to national fragmentations and potentials for reintegration. We spoke about COVID and forced migrations and their impact on refugees with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Clementine Nkweta-Sala, our collaborations with the Block Museum and Anthropology in the African Heritage in Dialogue with Caravans of Gold continental partners, the Queering Belonging series, the Islam and Trans-Atlantic Black Liberation series, the Reclaiming the Tongue series, Ato Quayson on The Ambiguity of Colonial Modernity, our Critical African Heritages workshops, our new fellows program, YALI, and our well tested Visiting Scholars series.
Currently, we have two visiting fellows, Paul Naylor, an ISITA visiting scholar, and Eric Berman, a PAS visiting scholar as well as Faith Chebet, our Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant. some in residence for the fall and some for the whole year. This fall, we are continuing our usual visitor programming with esteemed guest Jean Allman and a new video series on Hair. We are also working on bringing artists and scholars from the continent to foster a new creative scholarship across disciplines.
We are building a clear map of what we should do, can do, and have committed to do. Hence the welcome today in Ibibio, one of Nigeria’s 250 languages. If we know one thing on the continent, we know this, diversity is power and fragments can be synthesized into a common hope, a single direction, yet remain distinct and powerful. Integration isn’t a loss of individuality; it is a weaving together of complete things into a shared tapestry. Please, come with us on this ever-renewing, always exciting journey. As our inaugural Pius Okigbo Visiting Research Fellow, Musifiky Muanasali, might say, in the language closest to his heart, Kiswahili, Asante, thank you.