African Studies Faculty

The core faculty conduct research in all regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Their teaching and research interests converge around such topics as politics and governance; social organization and social change; health and disease; systems of thought and belief; gender; art; ritual, performance, and cultural representation; language and communication; political economy; and economic development.

Mailing: our core faculty reside in different home departments. Please DO NOT use the Institute of African Studies address for mailing bulk or circular letters to our faculty. We will return it to the sender. Please use each faculty home department's address instead.


African Studies Faculty

Edna G. Bay (Ph.D., Boston University), Professor, Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts. Research Interests: Gender, cultural history, religion and art, historical anthropology, West Africa.

Sam Cherribi (Ph.D, University of Amsterdam), Senior Lecturer, Sociology and Assistant to the Provost, Provost Office. Research Interests: contemporary sociological theory, new and old media, religion and politics, culture, immigration, countries and transnational communities with the following languages: French, Arabic, Dutch, Spanish and English.

Clifton Crais (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins), Professor of History, History Department. Research interests: Political culture and violence, economic change and histories of vulnerability, cross-cultural encounters, comparative colonialism, subaltern biographies.

David Eltis(Ph.D., University of Rochester), Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History, History Department. Research Interests: Early modern Atlantic World, slavery and the slave trade, and establishing the identities of captives sent to the Americas.

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (Ph.D., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), Professor, Art History Department. Research Interests: Art, ritual and representation, masking, colonial and postcolonial urban art, West and East Africa.

Ivan Karp (Ph.D., University of Virginia), National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Liberal Arts, Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts. Research Interests: Social organization and social change, politics of culture, anthropology of museums and exhibitions, African systems of thought, social anthropology, social theory, East Africa. Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship.

Corinne A. Kratz (Ph.D., University of Texas-Austin), Professor, Institute of African Studies and Anthropology Department. Research Interests: Communication and culture, ceremony and performance, cultural history, cultural politics, semiotics and symbolism, gender, museums and cultural display, visual anthropology, East Africa. Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship.

Christine Loflin (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison), Associate Professor, Humanities Department, Oxford College of Emory. Research Interests: Interdisciplinary course development, island landscapes in literature, and gender issues in the novels of Bessie Head and Nadine Gordimer.

Kristin Mann (Ph.D., Stanford University), Professor, History Department. Research Interests: Social history, gender, law, marriage and kinship, slavery and emancipation, economic transformation, historical anthropology, West Africa.

Elizabeth McBride (A.M. University of Chicago, M.S. Columbia University), Librarian for African Studies.

Pamela F. Scully (Ph.D., University of Michigan), Associate Professor, Women's Studies and Institute of African Studies. Research Interests: Comparative gender and women's history, slavery and emancipation, colonial cultures, South Africa and British Empire.

Kate Winskell (Ph.D.), Visiting Assistant Professor and Assistant Director, Center for Health, Culture and Society, Department of International Health, Rollins School of Public Health. Research Interests: HIV/AIDS communication, with a special focus on young people in Africa. See web-site: Scenarios from Africa.

African Studies Staff

Candyce Jefferson, Undergraduate Secretary