Mission
What makes for a good conversation? A good conversation is dynamic and captivating. It engages diverse perspectives and forms, always looking to expand its reach. It makes itself heard through words, gestures, images, actions, and speech. It flits across the boundaries of memory and reverie with confidence and ease. Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of the Akan people that means “go back and get it.” A good conversation reaches back to move forward, recognizing that past, present, and future are inextricably intertwined.
The Africa Seminar (Afrisem) is an interdisciplinary graduate student research collective in African studies founded at Northwestern University in xxxx. In the wake of the 2020 global coronavirus pandemic, our members saw an opportunity to expand critical conversations in African studies to new, digital platforms accessible to researchers and interested publics based anywhere. Our mission is to create an accessible digital platform for good conversations about Africa and the diaspora—a rigorous ‘Africa Seminar’ that lives outside of academic departments in a more malleable and open-ended digital landscape.
Vision
- A space to document and archive the past, present, and future activities of the Afrisem collective and the research of Afrisem members.
- A space for contributions of new knowledge on topics related to Africa and the African diaspora in creative public-facing forms (online think pieces, reviews, op-eds, digitally shareable research articles, photo essays, videos of performances, artwork, etc.)
- A space for interdisciplinary experimentation and collaboration. Distilling esoteric research concepts into a digitally shareable, publicly accessible form allows disciplines to more easily talk to each other in simple terms and invites the participation of people with all different backgrounds to collaborate on multimedia projects.
- A space where researchers and publics within and outside the African continent can engage with one another’s ideas in meaningful ways undeterred by institutional barriers and time zones.
About AfriSem
The Africa Seminar (AfriSem) Provides an interdisciplinary and area-defined setting for graduate students studying Africa to develop, present, and draw advice on papers and research proposals.
It is open to graduate students (and advanced undergraduates by permission) from any discipline, department, or school of Northwestern, at whatever stage of completion of their graduate program. Graduate students are encouraged to participate in AfriSem throughout their graduate years. Student who regularly attend Afrisem are eligible to receive course credit and research funding from the Program of African Studies.
AfriSem meets every other week in the evenings and is student-driven. Faculty facilitator for the 2020-21 Academic Year is Zekeria Salem (political science). Afrisem Leaders and Student Coordinators are Austin Bryan (anthropology) and Sasha Artamonova (art history).
If you have questions or would like to join AfriSem, please email Afrisem@u.Northwestern.edu.
Image: Keynote presentation from the 2019 Afrisem International Conference, Block Museum, Northwestern University.
