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October 4, 2024
The one-day conference will take place on Friday, October 4th at the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center on the campus of Michigan State University. A keynote speaker and sixteen invited panelists will contribute to conversations on "The State of the Field, and New Directions" in West African History. Dr. Michael A. Gomez, the Silver Professor of History & Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, will deliver the keynote address on "The State in West Africa." The invited panelists will deliver papers that address the following topics: (1) Archives, Sources, and Methods for West African History; (2) West Africa & the World: Diaspora, Pan-Africanism, and Global Connections; (3) Gender in West African History: Past Developments and Future Directions; and (4) Environment in the History of West Africa. The conference is free and open to the public.
The conference celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Journal of West African History (JWAH), providing an opportunity to reflect on the journal’s contributions to the field and explore new directions for the decade ahead. Published semiannually, JWAH is a leading peer-reviewed journal featuring cutting-edge scholarship on the social, cultural, economic, and political history of West Africa. It addresses significant representational gaps by offering a platform for rigorous analysis and debate on topics such as women and gender, sexuality, slavery, oral history, popular culture, and religion. International in scope, JWAH fosters critical interventions in knowledge production. Each issue also includes scholarly book reviews, with content published in both English and French.