Event Details:

About the Speaker:

Cheikh A. Babou holds a PhD in African History from Michigan State University. He joined the faculty of the history department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 2002. Dr. Babou teaches African History and the History of Islam in Africa. His research focuses on mystical Islam in West Africa and Senegal and on Senegalese international migration. Professor Babou has published extensively on the Muridiyya Muslim order of Senegal. His book, Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913 was published by Ohio University Press in 2007. A French version was released by Karthala under the title Le Jihad de l'âme: Amadou Bamba et la foundation de la Mouridiyya (1853-1913) in 2011.  Dr. Babou's articles appeared in African Affairs, Journal of African History, International Journal of African Historical Studies, Journal of Religion in Africa and other scholarly journals in the United States and in Europe. He was co-editor of the Journal of African History for five years (2010-2015. Dr. Babou has presented papers in international scholarly meetings in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, and across the United States. His current research project examines the experience of West African Muslim immigrants in Europe and North America.

About the Talk:

If I had to decide on a single word to characterize historical construction of Africa and the Africans that word would be contested. Of course, all histories are contested. The discipline of history thrives on controversies and disagreements. Historical consensus is always unstable and temporary. But even when one accounts for the intrinsically conflicted nature of the process of historical knowledge production, African history still stands out for the intensity of debates and controversies surrounding important episodes of the African past and present. In this brief presentation I offer a critical review of dominant narratives about Africa's past and present to highlight the underlying epistemic, ideological, and economic preconceptions that undergird historical constructions of Africa.