University of Chicago. Committee on African Studies

Following the Second World War there was a consistent interest in Africa at the University of Chicago exemplified by faculty exchanges with African Institutions and a bourgeoning of students engaging in research concerning Africa at the Doctoral level. In 1960, a formal committee on Near Eastern and African studies was formed to meet the growing needs of the school. Following a rapid expansion of interest in African studies, including the hiring of seven new faculty members with African research experience, a separate committee on African Studies was established in 1964.The committee on African studies later was expanded to also incorporate African American Studies. It is an interdepartmental, interdivisional body concerned with promoting the study of African and African-American culture and society from prehistoric until contemporary times. The committee used funds provided by the University and grant organizations to expand fellowship programs, augment library holdings, finance visiting lectures and to support the hiring of new appointments, as well as providing funds to aid students and faculty members as they engaged in field work. Currently, the main activities of the Committee on African and African-American Studies are the coordination of graduate studies programs and the management of workshops and conferences.

The University of Chicago African Studies Workshop is an interdisciplinary forum conducted and operated under the auspices of the University Council for Advanced Studies. The workshops involved in the Council for Advanced Studies (CAS) emerged in 1982 following recommendations from a research inquiry called the University of Chicago Commission on Graduate Education, also known as the Baker Report. The mandate was to provide advanced graduate students with the opportunity to discuss and present their dissertation research to a diverse community of scholars. Since its inception the workshop system has been gradually expanded to encompass not only advanced graduate students, but less advanced graduate students’ MA papers and dissertation proposals, as well as visiting scholars’ and faculty works in progress.

The African Studies Workshop forum is specifically organized for graduate students and faculty whose research involves social, historical, political and economic lives of people of the African Continent as well as its historical and contemporary diasporas. The majority of participants in the African Studies Workshop come from the Department of Anthropology, but the workshop student coordinators and faculty sponsors have also actively encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration and conversation by including participants and members from the disciplines of history, human development, literature, political science and religious studies. Additionally, the African Studies Workshop has been a platform for cross-institutional collaboration and cooperation through participation in special sessions at the Red Lion Pub on the north side of Chicago. These special sessions are co-coordinated with Northwestern University’s Program on African Studies and have historically involved participants from both the Committee for African and African American Studies at the University of Chicago and the aforementioned Northwestern University Program.

The workshop has historically been organized by graduate student coordinators working under the oversight of one or two faculty sponsors. These coordinators bear the responsibility (in consultation with the faculty sponsors) of planning the yearly workshop presentation schedule, inviting and corresponding with visiting guest speakers, and maintaining the yearly CAS budget allocated for workshop activities, refreshments, transportation and honoraria for visiting guests. Each year the workshop undergoes a review and evaluation process by CAS and must present the previous year’s activities, graduate student and faculty participation and continued interest in the existence of the workshop.