ONLINE: Africa at Noon

media release: Every Wednesday at noon — since 1973! — African Studies Program faculty, students, and community members have gathered for AFRICA AT NOON, a one-hour weekly lecture series bringing diverse African research from scholars around the world to a campus and community audience.

The Africa at Noon series will take place virtually this semester until further notice. All are welcome. To access the event directly, click here. For dial-in information, click here.

You can view available recordings of past Africa at Noon webinars using the link(s) on the event page.

Oct. 13: Jan Vansina Lecture

“Waking Dreams: A Philosophy of African Independences”

Yala Kisukidi, associate professor in philosophy at Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis University

Within the political field, the whole semantics of the dream is spontaneously disqualified. Nevertheless, it is possible to aesthetically, philosophically, and politically re-signify the state of conscious dreamers. In this lecture my aim is to reread the history of African Independences through the idea of “waking dream”. I will try to show, through the political hopes of Patrice Emery Lumumba (1925-1961), how it is possible to dismantle a history of defeat and emphasize the long survival of traditions of political struggle in central Africa.