PROGRAM OF AFRICAN STUDIES

Affiliated Faculty

Chris Abani

Board of Trustees Professor of English

Area(s) of Interest: African Poetics; World Literature; African Presences in Medieval and Renaissance Cultural Spaces; West African Music; Yoruba and Igbo Philosophy and Religion
Phone number: 847-467-1065
E-mail: chris.abani@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Chris Abani, Board of Trustees Professor of English, is an acclaimed novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright. His wide-ranging interests include African poetics, world literature, African presences in medieval and renaissance cultural spaces, West African music, and Yoruba and Igbo philosophy and religion.

Bimbola Akinbola

Assistant Professor of Performance Studies

Area(s) of Interest: Art History, Art Theory and Practice, Black studies, Diaspora Studies, Feminist theory, Queer theory, Visual cultures
E-mail: bimbola.akinbola@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Bimbola Akinbola is Chicago-based artist and scholar. Working at the intersection of African diaspora studies, performance, visual culture, and postcolonial theory, Dr. Akinbola’s scholarly work is concerned with kinship and belonging, gender performance, and affect in the African diaspora.

Karen Alter

Political Science and Law

Area(s) of Interest: Creation and influence of international courts in Latin America and Africa
Phone number: 847-491-4842
E-mail: kalter@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Karen Alter, Political Science and Law, studies the political influence of international courts around the world. More recent work examines the creation and influence of international courts in Latin America and Africa.

Dotun Ayobade

Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies

Area(s) of Interest: African/Black Performance Theory, African Popular Culture, Performance Ethnography/Historiography, Petrocultures and Extractive Economies Dance in Contemporary Africa, Fela Kuti/Afrobeat Music
E-mail: dotun.ayobade@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Dotun Ayobade (he, his, him) holds a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in Performance Studies and African American Studies. He studies how embodied forms of popular culture shape the meaning of community, justice and activism in postcolonial West Africa. Ayobade attends to how West Africans activate aesthetic and everyday social performance to shape their lived realities, forge belonging, and declare being within the political economy of postcolonial Africa. His work considers the function of embodiment in and across a range of cultural forms—i.e., dance, theatre, sound, material culture, performance art and photography—alongside the multiple significations of the aestheticized body in contemporary Nigeria: as an archive of collective desires and underexplored histories, as a fodder for subversive worldmaking, and as a space for rearticulating meaning and possibility between Africa and the African diaspora. His work sits at the intersections of Dance and Performance Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Gender Studies, and Popular Cultural and Postcolonial Studies.

Julia Behrman

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Area(s) of Interest: Family, Gender, Demography, Education, Health
Phone number: 847-467-4069
E-mail: julia.behrman@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Julia Behrman’s research explores the relationship between inequality in educational opportunity and demographic processes, with emphasis on fertility and family formation. Much of her work is motivated by a central question: How does family background shape educational opportunities, and in turn, how does education shape fertility, family formation, and the intergenerational transmission of inequality? Her work takes an international comparative perspective that focuses on contexts in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia undergoing rapid economic, social, and demographic change.

Adia Benton

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Global health, biomedicine, development, humanitarianism, political economy, race, gender, sports, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, US
Phone number: 847/491-2852
E-mail: adia.benton@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Adia Benton, cultural anthropologist with interests in global health, biomedicine, development and humanitarianism and professional sports. These concerns arise from a previous career in the fields of public health and post-conflict development in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

Kathleen Bickford Berzock

Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, Block Museum

Area(s) of Interest: African art
Phone number: 847-467-5047
E-mail: kathleen.berzock@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, Block Museum, specializes in African art. Previously, she curated several innovative exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago, including Benin-Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria (2008), Masterpieces from Central Africa: Selections from the Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren (1999).

César Braga-Pinto

Professor of Portuguese

Area(s) of Interest: Brazilian, Lusophone African and Comparative Literature
Phone number: 847-491-8129
E-mail: c-braga-pinto@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: César Braga-Pinto is an Associate Professor of Brazilian, Lusophone African and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University. He is the author of As Promessas da História: Discursos Proféticos e Assimilação no Brasil Colonial (2003) and the editor of Ligeiros Traços: escritos de juventude de José Lins do Rego (2007).

Sherwin Bryant

Associate Professor of African American Studies

Area(s) of Interest: Colonial Latin American History; Slavery, race, and the early modern African Diaspora
Phone number: 847-491-3756
E-mail: s-bryant@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Sherwin Bryant, African American history, History, specializes in colonial Latin American History with a particular emphasis upon slavery, race, and the early modern African Diaspora.

Antawan I. Byrd

Assistant Professor of Art History

Area(s) of Interest: Africa and African Diaspora, Photography, Global Modern and Contemporary,
E-mail: abyrd@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Antawan I. Byrd is an art historian and curator. His work focuses on the art and culture of Africa from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Byrd’s research investigates histories of entanglement between Africa and the world, especially those mediated by sound technologies, largescale exhibitions and biennials, the circulation of photography, popular culture, and theories and practices of Pan-Africanism. Byrd is especially drawn to analytical models and interpretive methods that accommodate polycentricity and non-linear approaches to time.

Erin Delaney

Professor of Law

Area(s) of Interest: constitutional design, federalism, courts
Phone number: 312-503-0925
E-mail: erin.delaney@law.northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Erin Delaney, Law and Political Science, studies courts in comparative perspective, with a focus on multi-level governance systems. Her current project explores the impact of colonialism on judicial structure and conceptions of judicial independence in African Commonwealth countries.

Andrew Dillon

Clinical Associate Professor, Kellogg; Research Associate Professor, Global Poverty Research Lab

Area(s) of Interest: market organization in developing countries and productivity-enhancing investments that households may make in health and nutrition, new agricultural technologies, and education
E-mail: andrew.dillon@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Andrew Dillon is a development economist whose research focuses on how improving productivity increases welfare in developing countries and the methods and measures that establish these causal relationships. His current research focuses on market organization in developing countries and productivity-enhancing investments that households may make in health and nutrition, new agricultural technologies, and education. Ongoing projects are currently being implemented with government, private sector firms, and NGOs in Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria.

Douglas Foster

Associate Professor of Journalism

Area(s) of Interest: Post Apartheid South Africa
Phone number: 847-467-7661
E-mail: dmfoster@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Douglas Foster, Medill, teaches feature writing, a regular contributor to major newspapers and magazines, including Smithsonian, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times. His most recent book is "After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post Apartheid South Africa," which examines a country caught between a democratic future and a political meltdown.

Shannon Galvin

Associate Professor of Medicine

Area(s) of Interest: HIV research in Malawi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, Swaziland, Namibia and Nigeria; Correlates of immunity to HIV; Diagnosis and management of acute HIV; Optimal delivery of care in resource limited settings
Phone number: 312-695-5085
E-mail: s-galvin@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Dr. Shannon Galvin, Center for Global Health, Feinberg School of Medicine, is a faculty in the Infectious Diseases division at Feinberg School of Medicine and the Director of Clinical Programs & Training for the Center for Global Health. She has over 10 years experience working as a clinician and HIV researcher in Malawi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, Swaziland, Namibia and Nigeria.

Doris Garraway

Associate Professor of French

Area(s) of Interest: Early modern francophone cultural studies; comparative 20th century francophone literatures (including those of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean); Travel exoticism in early modern French literature
Phone number: 847-491-8255
E-mail: d-garraway@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Doris Garraway, French, focuses on early modern francophone cultural studies, comparative 20th century francophone literatures (including those of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean) and travel exoticism in early modern French literature.

Thomas Geraghty

Professor of Law

Area(s) of Interest: Criminal and juvenile defense; Death penalty appeals; Child-centered projects dealing with the representation of children and juvenile court reform
Phone number: 312-503-8574
E-mail: tgeraghty@law.northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Thomas Geraghty, Associate Dean for Clinical Education, Professor of law, and Director of Bluhm Legal Clinic, is an expert on criminal and juvenile defense, death penalty appeals, child-centered projects dealing with the representation of children and juvenile court reform.

Wendy Griswold

Professor of Sociology

Area(s) of Interest: Social context of literary production and reception in anglophone West Africa
Phone number: 847-491-2701
E-mail: w-griswold@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Wendy Griswold, sociology, investigates the social context of literary production and reception in anglophone West Africa. Her book, Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Nigerian Novel, received the 2002 Best Book award in cultural sociology the American Sociological Association.

Sean Hanretta

Associate Professor of History

Area(s) of Interest: West African intellectual history, with a focus on Islam; African religions in Francophone West Africa and Ghana
Phone number: 847-491-7557
E-mail: sean.hanretta@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Sean Hanretta, Associate Professor, History, specializes in West African intellectual history, with a focus on Islam and African religions in Francophone West Africa and Ghana.

Mark Hauser

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Material culture of the African Diaspora; Social inequality and identity in the Caribbean
Phone number: 847-467-1648
E-mail: mark-hauser@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Mark Hauser, Anthropology. His research examines the material culture of the African Diaspora and social inequality and identity in the Caribbean. His work pays special attention to understanding the everyday life and material world of enslaved laborers.

Stephen Hill

Senior Associate Director, Office of Fellowships

Area(s) of Interest: Interface between Tanzanian music and nationalism; Wamatengo in southwestern Tanzania; Gender in musical choices; How historical circumstances may stimulate musical action
Phone number: 847-491-2617
E-mail: s-hill@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Stephen Hill Assistant Director, Office of Fellowships, focuses on the interface between Tanzanian music and nationalism, with special reference to the Wamatengo in southwestern Tanzania. His work shows how music reflects and aids the comprehension of new realities during periods of broad social upheaval.

Katherine Hoffman

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Relationship between expressive culture, ethnicity, and political economy in North Africa
Phone number: 847-491-4565
E-mail: khoffman@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Katherine Hoffman, Anthropology, explores the relationship between expressive culture, ethnicity, and political economy in North Africa, particularly Morocco, from the late 19th c. to the present.

Brannon Ingram

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Area(s) of Interest: Islamic Studies; Sufism in South Africa and modern South Asia
Phone number: 847-467-4170
E-mail: brannon.ingram@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Brannon Ingram, Religious Studies, specializes in Islamic Studies, with a focus on Sufism in South Africa and modern South Asia. His research engages with transnational and translocal flows of people, texts and ideas in the global Muslim South and how these flows have upended traditional forms and structures of authority in Islam.

Esmeralda Kale

George and Mary LeCron Foster Curator of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies

Phone number: 847-491-3941
E-mail: ekale@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Esmeralda Kale is the George and Mary LeCron Foster Curator of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies.

Fatima Khan

Associate Professor of Instruction, Arabic

Area(s) of Interest: Arabic, African and Asian Languages
Phone number: 847-467-1637
E-mail: fatima@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Fatima Khan teaches Beginning and Intermediate Arabic at Northwestern. Currently she is the coordinator for Intermediate Arabic. She has received the Hewlett Grant for curriculum development to design a course to teach Media Arabic as well as a coursebook to help students understand broadcast news.

Robert Launay

Professor of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Islamic identity in West African societies; The roles of clerics in shaping social discourse; History of anthropological theory; pre-Enlightenment images of African and other cultures
Phone number: 847-491-4841
E-mail: rgl201@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Robert Launay, Anthropology, investigates Islamic identity in West African societies and the roles of clerics in shaping social discourse. He also examines the history of anthropological theory and pre-Enlightenment images of African and other cultures.

Peter Locke

Assistant Professor of Instruction, Global Health Studies and Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Humanitarian psychiatry; Global mental health; Medical humanitarianism; Public health challenges in post-conflict settings
Phone number: 847-491-4832
E-mail: peter.locke@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Peter's research interests include humanitarian psychiatry, global mental health, medical humanitarianism, and public health challenges in post-conflict settings. His current project has brought him to Sierra Leone, where he has led interdisciplinary cohorts of undergraduates to conduct ethnographic research in collaboration with a small medical humanitarian organization.

Amanda Logan

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Everyday life in times of environmental, political, and economic change; West Africa’s participation in global trade networks
Phone number: 847-491-4564
E-mail: amanda.logan@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Amanda Logan, Anthropology, focuses on everyday life in times of environmental, political, and economic change, particularly West Africa’s participation in global trade networks.

Ragy Mikhaeel

Associate Professor of Instruction, Arabic

Area(s) of Interest: Arabic and Egyptian spoken dialect
Phone number: 847-467-0927
E-mail: r-mikhaeel@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Ragy's work has focused on the Egyptian spoken dialect, and has worked on several curriculum development projects. He has received awards for developing an online tool for his Arabic language students to interact with audio and video explanations while analyzing annotated texts from the Arabic Manuscripts from West Africa collection in Northwestern’s Herskovits Library of African Studies.

Ameet Morjaria

Associate Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences

Area(s) of Interest: Economic Development, Organizational Economics, Political Economy
Phone number: 847-467-4683
E-mail: a.morjaria@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Morjaria’s research interests are in development economics, organizations and political economy across several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda). His current research focuses on understanding the impact of competition on productivity and relational contracts, industrial policy in emerging markets, and the impact of electoral conflict on firm operations.

Evan Mwangi

Professor in English

Area(s) of Interest: African fiction in the contexts of literary theory; TV news; Sports; Aesthetics; East African hiphop music
Phone number: 847-491-3529
E-mail: evan-mwangi@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Evan Maina Mwangi teaches 20th Century Anglophone African Literature. He researches the intersection of nationalism, gender, and sexuality in canonical and popular artistic expressions, relating local texts to global theories.

Peter Mwangi

Assistant Professor of Instruction, Swahili

Area(s) of Interest: current trends in global higher education, impact of the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) on the internationalization of higher education in the U.S.
Phone number: 847-467-2004
E-mail: peter.mwangi@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Swahili classes are taught by Professor Peter Mwangi. Peter’s general research interest area is in current trends in global higher education. He is currently researching on the impact of the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) on the internationalization of higher education in the U.S.

Leah Neubauer

Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine

Area(s) of Interest: Evaluation, global health, HIV infection, health disparities, public health, qualitative research methods, translational research, women's health, women's reproductive health
Phone number: 312-908-7914
E-mail: leah.neubauer@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Dr. Neubauer's research focuses on health education and promotion, global health, and health disparities. She leads and collaborates on projects that employ mixed-method approaches to develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate translational and culturally responsive research and evaluation.

Akin Ogundiran

Professor of History, Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Sciences

Area(s) of Interest: Geographic Field(s): African History Thematic Field(s): War and Empire in History; Urban History; Gender and Sexuality History; Colonial, Imperial, and Diasporic History; Religious History; African Diaspora and African American History; Environmental History Principal Research Interest(s): Africa since 500 BC
Phone number: 847-491-8963
E-mail: ogundiran@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Akin Ogundiran (Ph.D., Boston, 2000) is broadly interested in the archaeology and history of Africa over the past 2,500 years, with emphasis on the Yoruba world (West Africa). His earlier research efforts sought to understand the impacts of global/regional political economies on community formations and how social actors created knowledge, communities, and identities with objects and the landscape. Ogundiran’s current research intersects cultural, political economy, and environmental approaches to study the history of complex social systems at different scales—e.g., household, urbanism, and empire.

Kara Palamountain

Associate Professor, Kellogg School of Management and Global Health Studies

Area(s) of Interest: international healthcare, medical technologies and cost effectiveness of healthcare in Africa
Phone number: 847-491-4971
E-mail: k-palamountain@kellogg.northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Kara Palamountain has managed over 50 Kellogg field research teams conducting market entry analysis for medical technologies in over a dozen countries. She was a co-investigator on a cost-effectiveness project at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and has also served as an external reviewer for various projects under consideration by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Nasrin Qader

Associate Professor of French

Area(s) of Interest: Modern Arabic literature; African literature in French and English; and Literary theory and criticism
Phone number: 847-491-8263
E-mail: n-qader@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Nasrin Qader, French & Italian. Specializes in modern Arabic literature, African literature in French and English, and literary theory and criticism.

Will Reno

Professor of Political Science

Area(s) of Interest: Conflict in the context of state collapse; Political strategies of armed groups and the politics of international intervention and counter insurgency; Somalia and the greater Horn of Africa region
Phone number: 847-491-5794
E-mail: reno@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Will Reno studies conflict in the context of state collapse, with a focus on the political strategies of armed groups and the politics of international intervention and counterinsurgency. His main area for recent research is Somalia and the greater Horn of Africa region. Visit Reno's web site.

Jeff Rice

Senior Lecturer of Political Science

Area(s) of Interest: West African state development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Expansion of Asante
Phone number: 847-491-8909
E-mail: j-rice2@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Jeff Rice, Weinberg College advisor and history lecturer focuses on West African state development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with special interest in the expansion of Asante. He is also the advisor for African Studies in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences.

Zekeria Ahmed Salem

Director of ISITA, Associate Professor of Political Science

Area(s) of Interest: Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa, Islamic Thought; Islam, race and ethnicity; social movements; bureaucratization; equality and citizenship; the State in Africa
Phone number: 847-467-2143
E-mail: zekeria.salem@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Zekeria Ahmed Salem is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and Director of The Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa in the Program of African Studies. He specializes in Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa in comparative perspective. His research engages contemporary academic debates regarding religion and politics.

David Schoenbrun

Professor of History

Area(s) of Interest: History of power in Uganda; Great Lakes region of Africa
Phone number: 847-491-7278
E-mail: dls@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: David Schoenbrun, History, is concerned with the gendered history of power in Uganda and the Great Lakes region from earliest times to the fifteenth century.

Rebecca Shereikis

Associate Director of ISITA

Area(s) of Interest: Francophone West Africa (particularly Mali); African Muslim responses to colonialism; Islamic law in African contexts
Phone number: 847-491-2598
E-mail: r-shereikis@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Rebecca Shereikis, ISITA, is a historian with interests in francophone West Africa (particularly Mali), African Muslim responses to colonialism, and Islamic law in African contexts.

Juliet Sorensen

Professor of Law

Area(s) of Interest: Health and human rights; International criminal law; Corruption
Phone number: 312-503-1482
E-mail: j-sorensen@law.northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Juliet Sorensen, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Law and Kellogg, focuses on health and human rights, international criminal law, and corruption. She is a director of the Northwestern Access to Health Project, an interdisciplinary global community health partnership.

Noelle Sullivan

Associate Professor of Global Health and Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Global and state health policy; Donor-funded health interventions; Biomedical practice in Tanzania's health sector from the 1980s to present
Phone number: 847-467-2780
E-mail: noelle.sullivan@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Noelle Sullivan is a cultural and medical anthropologist focusing on the politics of global health in practice. Sullivan is concerned about what becomes ‘in vogue’ in global health. Which issues or needs tend to be included/excluded or celebrated/marginalized? How global health concerns are taken up, and by whom? She conducts ethnographic fieldwork in northern Tanzania.

Ana Thomé Williams

Associate Professor of Portuguese

Area(s) of Interest: Portuguese language and culture in the lusophone world; linguistic and cultural exchanges between Brazil and the Lusophone Africa; Francophone Africa
Phone number: 847-467-1052
E-mail: ana-williams@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Ana Thomé-Williams, Spanish and Portuguese, specializes in Portuguese language and culture in the lusophone world, with a focus on linguistic and cultural exchanges between Brazil and the Lusophone Africa. Fluent in French as well, she also has an interest in the Francophone Africa.

Krista Thompson

Professor of Art History

Area(s) of Interest: Postcolonial theory and visual culture; Race and representation; The imaginative geography of the tropics; Caribbean art; African diaspora performance arts; Photography in Africa and the African diaspora
Phone number: 847-467-5796
E-mail: krista-thompson@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Krista Thompson, Weinberg College Board of Visitors Professor and Professor in the Department of Art History, researches and teaches the modern and contemporary art and visual culture of the Africa diaspora, with an emphasis on photography.

Ava Thompson Greenwell

Professor of Journalism

Area(s) of Interest: Intersection of race, gender and journalism; South Africa
Phone number: 847-467-2579
E-mail: a-greenwell@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Ava Thompson Greenwell teaches video journalism courses and has served as associate dean and department chair. She is the co-director of Medill’s South Africa Journalism Residency Program and is currently in production on “Mission Possible, Chicago’s Free South Africa Movement,” a historical documentary. Her research interests focus on the intersection of race, gender and journalism. She worked as a reporter at WFLA-TV, Tampa, FL; WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, MN; WEHT-TV in Evansville, IN and as a freelance correspondent at WTTW-TV and WGN-TV in Chicago.

Helen Tilley

Associate Professor of History

Area(s) of Interest: Interplay among environmental, medical, and human sciences in nineteenth and twentieth century Africa; European imperialism and development studies
Phone number: 847-467-3397
E-mail: helen.tilley@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Helen Tilley, History, explores the interplay among environmental, medical, and human sciences in nineteenth and twentieth century Africa, with a particular focus on European imperialism and development studies. Her current research examines the history of African decolonization, global governance, and the ethnoscientific projects that accompanied post-colonial state building in the Cold War era.

Christopher Udry

Professor of Economics, Co-Director of Global Poverty Research Lab

Area(s) of Interest: rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Phone number: 847-491-8216
E-mail: christopher.udry@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Chris Udry is a development economist whose research focuses on rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. His current research examines technological change, risk and financial markets, gender and households, property rights, psychological well-being and economic decision-making and a variety of other aspects of rural economic organization.

Alexander Weheliye

Professor of African American Studies

Area(s) of Interest: African American and African Diasporic literatures and popular cultures; Critical theory; Popular musical history.
Phone number: 847-491-4863
E-mail: a-weheliye@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Alexander Weheliye, African American Studies and English, specializes in African American and African Diasporic literatures and popular cultures, critical theory, and popular musical history.

Ivy Wilson

Associate Professor of English, Director of American Studies

Area(s) of Interest: Comparative literatures of the black diaspora and U.S. literary studies; African American culture
Phone number: 847-491-3496
E-mail: i-wilson@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Ivy Wilson, English, teaches courses on the comparative literatures of the black diaspora and U.S. literary studies with a particular emphasis on African American culture.

Jessica Winegar

Professor of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: How people articulate understandings of history and political-economic change through cultural production and consumption; Competing notions of culture and culturedness
Phone number: 847-491-4831
E-mail: j-winegar@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Jessica Winegar, Anthropology, investigates how people articulate understandings of history and political-economic change through cultural production and consumption, in particular through competing notions of culture and culturedness.

Zachary Wright

Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies

Area(s) of Interest: Islamic intellectual history in North and West Africa, from the seventeenth century to the present
E-mail: z-wright@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: Wright teaches classes on Islam in Africa, modern Middle East history, African history, Islamic intellectual history and Islam in America. His research focuses on Islamic intellectual history in North and West Africa, from the sixteenth century to the present. He did most of his field research in Senegal, Morocco, and Mauritania, with Arabic, French and Wolof language sources. He is currently collaborating on an analysis and translation of two key primary sources on empire building and Islamic scholarship in West Africa from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

Sera Young

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest: Reduction of maternal and child undernutrition in low-resource settings, especially sub-Saharan Africa
Phone number: 847 467-2174
E-mail: sera.young@northwestern.edu
Short Bio: The focus of Dr. Young’s work is on the reduction of maternal and child undernutrition in low-resource settings, especially sub-Saharan Africa. Methodologically, she draws on her training in medical anthropology, international nutrition, and HIV to take a biocultural approach to understanding how mothers in low-resource settings cope to preserve their health and that of their families.