Faculty

The African studies community at Northwestern includes over 40 faculty from 16 departments and programs across the disciplines who, in addition to teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, contribute to many aspects of the administration and organization of PAS initiatives. The PAS community is further enriched by graduate and undergraduate students from across the colleges and professional schools who participate formally and informally in PAS programs, and by an active visiting scholar and research affiliates program that draws outside researchers from Chicago and around the world.

Associated Faculty and Affiliates

Click on the name of the faculty member if you would like to email them. Most, but not all, have an e-mail address.

Adam Ashforth, anthropology and political science

Kevin Bell , english, concentrates upon trans-Atlantic literary modernisms, 20th century African American literature, modern philosophical aesthetics and experimental aesthetic forms.

Martha Biondi, African American studies, history, studies the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movement.

Caroline Bledsoe, anthropology, combines empirical work in demography with cultural approaches to the study of marriage and the condition of children in West Africa. Her research examines relationships among ideologies of knowledge, power, and secrecy; philosophies of education; and the construction of authority.

Sherwin Bryant, African American history, history, specializes in colonial Latin American History with a particular emphasis upon slavery, race, and the early modern African Diaspora.

Georgi M. Derluguian, sociology, has written about the sociology of colonial society in Mozambique and South Africa; his current work focuses on the proliferation of warlordism in Africa and the former Soviet Union.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne, philosophy, specializes in African philosophies, identity formation, Boolean algebra, history of mathmatics, and logic. His current interests center on reinterpreting Iqbal's philosophical thought in the modern Islamic world.

Bernadine Dohrn, Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Director and founder of the Children and Family Justice Center, is a child advocate who teaches, lectures and writes about children’s law, juvenile justice, the needs and rights of youth, and international human rights.

Margaret Thompson Drewal, performance studies, researches Yoruba and Afro-Brazilian ritual performance and has special interests in the poetics and politics of performance discourse.

David Easterbrook, George and Mary LeCron Foster Curator of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies

Brian T. Edwards, english, teaches and writes about U.S. literature and culture in its international context.  His fields of interest include American studies, comparative literature, cultural and diaspora studies, colonial and postcolonial discourse, film, and globalization. A former Fulbright Fellow to Morocco, he also specializes in Maghrebi literature and culture, especially in its intersections with U.S. culture and politics.

Linda Emanuel, Buehler Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Director of the Buehler Center on Aging, Health & Society at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine, is the founder and Principal of the national Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care (EPEC) Project. She is also the Director of the Ford Center on Global Citizenship's Health Section at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Dilip Gaonkar, communication studies, researches rhetoric and the human sciences; the relationship between rhetoric and literary/cultural theory; and, globalization of culture and communication.

Doris Garraway, French, focuses on early modern francophone cultural studies, comparative 20th century francophone literatures (including those of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean) and travel exoticism in early modern French literature.

Thomas Geraghty, Associate Dean for Clincal Education, Professor of law, and Director of Bluhm Legal Clinic, is an expert on criminal and juvenile defense, death penalty appeals, child-centered projects dealing with the representation of children and juvenile court reform.

Jonathon Glassman, history, studies comparative race and slavery, focusing on nineteenth and twentieth century East Africa. He won the Melville J. Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association for his first book, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888.

Wendy Griswold, sociology, investigates the social context of literary production and reception in anglophone West Africa. Her book, Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Nigerian Novel, received the 2002 Best Book award in cultural sociology the American Sociological Association.

Karen Tranberg Hansen, Director of Gradutate Study PAS, anthropology, is interested in the division of labor in terms of gender, race, and class. Her recent work on urban Zambia concerns colonial culture, domesticity, and gender ideology. She has also researched housing, the informal sector, wage labor, and the international trade in used clothing. Her book, Salalaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia, won the 2001 Anthony Leeds Prize of the Society for Urban Anthropology.

Carol Heimer, sociology, studies organizations, sociology of law, and medical sociology.

Katherine E. Hoffman, anthropology, researches linguistic and sociocultural anthropology.

Richard Joseph, John Evans Professor of Political Science and BCICS faculty affiliate. He has devoted his scholarly career to the study of politics and governance in Africa with a special focus on democratic transitions, state building and state collapse, and conflict resolution. He directed the African Governance Program at the Carter Center (1988-1994) and coordinated elections missions in Zambia (1991), Ghana (1992), and peace initiatives in Liberia (1991-1994).

David Kelso, biomedical engineering, specializes in medical instrumentation, biosensors, kinetics of antibody and DNA binding reactions in solution and on solid phases, pharmacokinetics, and optimization of drug administration.

Robert Launay, anthropology, investigates Islamic identity in West African societies and the roles of clerics in shaping social discourse. He also examines the history of anthropological theory and pre-Enlightenment images of African and other cultures.

Richard Lepine, African and Asian Languages, researches Swahili popular history, including serial fiction from East African newspapers and magazines. He teaches Swahili and East African literature in translation.

D. Soyini Madison, performance studies, anthropology, studies human rights and contemporary social movements. Madison lived and worked in Ghana, West Africa as a Senior Fulbright Scholar conducting field research on the interconnections between traditional religion, political economy, and indigenous performance tactics.

William Murphy, anthropology, is a linguistic anthropologist who analyses oratory and the rhetorical management of controversial ideas in Kpelle society as well as legal and human rights discourse in Africa. Murphy is also the coordinator of PAS's Undergraduate Study Abroad Initiative in Africa.

Evan Mwangi, English, is examining such authors examining such authors as Francis Davis Imbuga, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and David Maillu, he also teaches and researches African
fiction in the contexts of literary theory, TV news, sports, aesthetics, and East African hiphop music. Last fall Mwangi gave a PAS Monday Night Lecture, “Beyond Textual Play: Politics of Self-
Reflexivity in the Contemporary African Novel.”

Mary Pattillo, sociology and African American studies, research interests include race and ethnicity (specifically the black middle class), urban sociology, and qualitative methods.

Dylan Penningroth, history, is primarily interested in African American history, slavery, and emancipation, but he also has a strong interest in West African history. His subsidiary interests are family, marriage, and community linkages in southern Ghana during the nineteenth century.

Carl Petry, history, studies religious and judicial elites in medieval Egypt. His recent projects include studying Cairo's higher education system and the rise and fall of sultanic regimes in the Islamic Middle East.

Nasrin Qader, French & Italian. Specializes in modern Arabic literature, African literature in French and English, and literary theory and criticism.

Will Reno, political science, concentrates on the study of the politics of ethnic conflict and cross-national analysis of state collapse, with a focus on Sierra Leone and Liberia. Click here for his web site.

Jeff Rice, history, focuses on West African state development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with special interest in the expansion of Asante. He is also the advisor for African Studies in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences.

Sandra Richards, theatre and African American studies, is a scholar of performance practices and aethetics in African and African diaspora theater. She is especially interested in the implications of festival performance for written drama and the analysis of social movements.

David Schoenbrun, Director of Undergraduate Study PAS, history, is concerned with the gendered history of power in Uganda and the Great Lakes region from earliest times to the fifteenth century.

Jim Schwoch, communications studies, researches and teaches in the areas of international studies, media history, diplomacy, telecommunications and information technology policies, and research methodologies.

Rüdiger Seesemann, religion, specialist in the study of Islam in
sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, Seesemann has
wide-ranging interests that include Sufism, Islamic education, and the increasing influence of modern “fundamentalist” movements.

Ravi Shankar, Director International Office

Kearsley Alison Stewart, anthropology, investigates the social impact of adolescent HIV/AIDS in rural western Uganda.
(Web site).

Krista Thompson, art history, is interested in postcolonial theory and visual culture, race and representation, the imaginative geography of the tropics, Caribbean art, African diaspora performance arts, and photography in Africa and the African diaspora.

Mohammed Sani Umar, Director of ISITA, religion, African studies, researches Islam and Colonialism in West Africa, Islamic Law, Sufism-Anti-Sufism in West Africa, Contemporary Islamic Thought and Liberalism, Islamic Intellectual Traditions of West Africa, and the Theory and Methodology of Academic Study of Religion.

Akbar M. Virmani, political science, researches the position of refugees in the Horn of Africa, the meanings of exile, and the problems of national identity for displaced persons.

Rudolph Ware, history, specializes in West African history. His research interests include Islam, popular religious culture, and race. He also has a strong interest in exploring the interwoven histories of continental and Diaspora Africans in his teaching and research.

Celeste Watkins-Hayes, sociology, African American studies, research interests include urban poverty, social policy, HIV-AIDS, formal organizations (non-profit and government), and race, class, and gender.

Alexander Weheliye, African American studies and English, specializes in African American and African Diasporic literatures and popular cultures, critical theory, and popular musical history.

Lynn Whitcomb, African and Asian languages, investigates Arabic diglossia in foreign language instructor practice and in native speaker behavior in the United States. She is fluent in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic.

Emeriti

Morris Goodman, linguistics, researches Mauritian Creole French and other pidgin languages, Hausa, and Swahili. He is particularly interested in African national language debates.

John Hunwick, history and religion, researches the history of Muslim societies in West Africa. An expert on Arabic sources, his scholarship centers on the development of West African Islamic scholarship and the translation of primary texts and documents. His documentary history, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Saidi's Ta'rikh al-Sudan Down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents, won the 2001 African Studies Association Text Prize. Click here for his web site.

Hans E. Panofsky, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, served as the foundation curator of Northwestern’s Africana collection.

John Rowe, history, specializes in the history of East Africa, with special focus on sociopolitical transformations in the Buganda kingdom in Uganda during the nineteenth century.

Ivor Wilks, history, is an authority on the Asante state in Ghana and Wales in the 19th century. His work examines the nature of power and leadership, and the forms of collaboration and resistance.