Teaching African History Topic of Rice Humanities Seminar

Contact: Michael Cinelli
Phone: (713) 831-4794

Teaching African History Topic of Rice Humanities Seminar

Taking stock of African history courses at
American universities is the focus of the Sixth Annual African
Humanities Seminar that begins Thursday and runs through Saturday at
Rice University.

The seminar entitled “Africa and the Discipline of History” is
sponsored by the Rice University Center for the Study of Cultures.
The seminar features a keynote speech by Texas Southern University
history professor Gregory Maddox, who will provide his reflections
on teaching African history at a historically black university to
students who assume that the subject is the territory of professors
with black skin color.

Maddox will speak at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in 110 Rayzor Hall. His
talk is entitled “Africanist Historiography and African American
Narratives: Reflections on `Teaching’ African History at a
Historically Black University.”

The seminar will also investigate recent allegations that
American universities allegedly seem to prefer hiring people born on
the African continent to teach African history, said Atieno
Odhiambo, a Rice history professor and coordinator of the seminar.

These preferences seem to work against white males born in North
America and trained in African history being hired to teach African
history courses, according to the recent allegations. If that bias
exists, it could lead to the ghettoization of African history, some
scholars contend.

Philip D. Curtin, history professor at Johns Hopkins University,
wrote in the March 3, 1995, issue of The Chronicle of Higher
Education that he is “troubled by increasing evidence of the use of
racial criteria in filling faculty posts in the field of African
history.”

University administrators, Curtin stated, advertise faculty
positions in African studies “in ways that make it clear that the
job will go only to someone either African or of African descent.”

“This strategy ghettoizes African history,” he continued, “by
making the field an enclave within the university set aside for
black scholars. The flip side of the strategy is the de facto
requirement that black historians must teach African or African
American history, no matter what their actual field of
specialization.”

Odhiambo said Curtin’s article and Maddox’s talk will serve as
the basis for a discussion of that topic during lunch on Saturday,
which starts at 1 p.m. in 110 Rayzor Hall.

For more information on the seminar, call 527-8101, ext. 2770 or
ext. 3526.

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ATTACHMENT

Rice University Center for the Study of Cultures
Sixth Annual African Humanities Seminar
Africa and the Discipline of History
March 30-April 1, 1995

Thursday, March 30, 1995, Miner Lounge, Ley Student Center

1:30 p.m. Professor Susan MacIntosh, Department of Anthropology,
Rice University, “The State of the Art: Ongoing Archeological
Research in Africa”
2:30 p.m. Associate Professor Michael Maas, Department of
History, Rice University, “Reappropriating Roman Africa”
3:15 p.m. Professor Atieno Odhiambo, Department of History, Rice
University, “Non-Western Narratives: A History of the
Temajo People (Acholi) 1830-1995”
4:00 p.m. Osaak Olumwullah, graduate student, Department of
History, Rice University, “The Construction of Ethnicity:
AbaNyole of Western Kenya”

Friday, March 31, 1995, Kyle Morrow Room, 3rd Floor, Fondren Library

9:00 a.m. Professor J.F. Ade Ajayi, Professor of History
(emeritus), Ibadan University, Nigeria, “The Pasts and
Futures in African Historiography: Beyond Continuity and
Change”
10:30 a.m. Rita Segato, University of Brasilia,
and visiting professor, Department of Anthropology, Rice
University,”Why Not Becoming a Citizen?: What the African Religions in
Brazil Have to Say About Politics”
Karen Kossie, graduate student, Department of History, Rice
University, “African American Visions of Africa”
11:30 a.m. Associate Professor Bernard Aresu, Department of
French Studies, Rice University, “Francophone Narratives:
The Algerian Conundrum”
2:00 p.m. Professor Toyin Falola, History Department, the
University of Texas at Austin, “Colonial West African
Historiography”
3:00 p.m. Associate Professor Edward Cox, Department of History,
Rice University, “Africa in Exile: Kin Jaja of Opobo in the
West Indies”
4:00 p.m. David Coplan, University of Cape Town (South Africa)
and visiting professor, Department of Anthropology, Rice
University “Democracy, Power and Political Discourse in Lesotho”

Saturday, April 1, 1995, 110 Rayzor Hall

9:00 a.m. Professor B.A. Ogot, Director of Postgraduate Training
and Research, Maseno University College, Kenya “Reflections
on Nationalism and Independence: Obote’s Uganda”
10:30 a.m. Professor D.W. Cohen, Director, International
Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor “The Study of
the African Past in the United States”
Professor Gregory Maddox, History Department, Texas
Southern University “Africanist Historiography and African-American Narratives: Reflections on `Teaching’ African
History at a Historically Black University”
1:00 p.m. Lunchtime discussion: “Ghettoizing African History”
2:00 p.m. Associate Professor Phillip Wood, Department of French
Studies, Rice University “The Ideological Function of Post-Colonialist Literature: West-African Francophone Novels”