Dear alumni and friends of the African Cultural Studies Department,
As I was beginning to compose this newsletter, I received the devastating news that Conceição Lima (1961-2026) had died. Lima, who has been called one of the most original voices in Portuguese-language African poetry, passed away unexpectedly on the morning of May 15. She was born in the small island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, “this fragment of Africa/ where, facing South, / a word dawns on high/ like a mournful flag,” to cite the evocative description of her homeland in one of her best-known poems. The late Russell Hamilton, who was among the earliest North American scholars to study Afro-Portuguese literature, considered Lima not only one of the most significant poets writing in Portuguese, but in the wider world. Despite such critical praise and the appearance of the first book-length collection of her poetry in English in 2024, I suspect that neither Conceição Lima nor her natal archipelago is commonly known, even among scholars of African literature and culture.
And yet, as Howard French argues persuasively in his magisterial account of “the making of the modern world,” it is hard to underestimate the significance of the island of São Tomé in laying the foundations of the modern age. It was in São Tomé that “the slave-plantation-complex that would dominate the Western Hemisphere, and drive wealth creation in the North Atlantic for four centuries, was perfected.” The indelible history of this “grotesque inhumanity” suffuses Lima’s poetry like the quivering field of “a mournful flag.” My principal motivation in invoking Conceição Lima here is of course to pay just tribute to an exceptionally talented poet who left us far too soon. At the same time, it is difficult to resist the impulse to perceive Lima’s relative and, to my mind, unmerited obscurity in African literary studies as a kind of by-product of what French calls a centuries-long process of diminishing, even effacing Africans and people of African descent from the story of the modern world. Nevertheless, as French contends, “more than any other part of the world, Africa has been the linchpin of the machine of modernity.”
Our department’s strength and reputation rest precisely on our long-standing scholarly and pedagogic efforts to undo this familiar miscasting of Africa’s preeminent civilizational role.Despite the obstinate survival of the willful “mis-telling” of Africa’s story, the continent, as my colleagues have cogently argued, remains the site of transformative knowledge concerning some of the fundamental questions defining our times. As I wrote in last year’s newsletter, the times we live in do not favor this kind of endeavor. The current period is especially challenging for the preservation and protection of the academic freedom essential to successfully pursue our mission of excellence in research and teaching. As the Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University recently wrote, the ongoing attacks on higher education are not evenly distributed. The most deliberate, most structural, and most coordinated assaults have been reserved for Black studies departments and programs.
These enforced constraints make it nonetheless all the more crucial that we reaffirm and strengthen our abiding commitment to retelling the common narrative of humanity from Africa’s deeply consequential vantage point. As the notable achievements of our faculty and students continue powerfully to attest to, it has seldom been more urgent to tell this story, Professor Ainehi Edoro, who will deliver a keynote lecture at the upcoming African Literature Association conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, was promoted to Associate Professor. Her new book, Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think, was published in January of this year by Columbia University Press. Last October, Associate Professor Reginold Royston’s book Pan-African Futurism: Ghana and the Paradox of Technology for Development (University of California Press) also appeared in print. Professor Mougoué’s second book, Pan-African Pioneers and Religious Activism in Africa has been accepted for publication by the University of North Carolina Press. And Professor Marissa Moorman has completed a year-long fellowship at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, where she made significant progress on her third book-length study, Imperialism on Trial, which explores the far-reaching geopolitical repercussions of the trial of thirteen British and American mercenaries in Angola in June 1976.
Harry Kiiru successfully defended his dissertation, an analysis of the complex processes by dint of which new African immigrants are defined in terms of “the ethno–racial hierarchal order” that prevails in the United States and of how they negotiate this “racialized” identity. Harry is poised to embark on the next exciting stage of his professional trajectory. Tobi Idowu, Ernesta Cole and Abubakar Muhammad have passed their prelim exams and achieved dissertator status, and Diamond Urey passed her master’s exam and was admitted into our PhD program.
Once again, the quality and promise of the research projects of several of our graduate students has been recognized by awards and fellowships. Diamond Urey received the African Studies Program Research Award, which provides support for international travel for graduate student research or creative endeavors related to the study of Africa and the diaspora. Lin (Samira) Wu was awarded the Tejumola Olaniyan International Student Travel Award for research, archival work, and/or creative endeavors related to Global Black Cultures. Samira and Abubakar Muhammad shared the Ebrahim Hussein Fellowship, which supports research in African literature. Tobi Idowu and Ernesta Cole received the Aliko Songolo Summer Research Award for research on African expressive cultures. Alongside these graduate milestones, we’re also proud to see the paths taken by our African Cultural Studies undergraduates who graduate this year and begin their next chapters beyond UW–Madison.
I also take this moment to recognize and honor a significant transition within our department. After nearly two decades devoted to teaching in our Arabic language program, and a decade directing Baytunaa (The Arabic Language residence at the International Learning Community), Mustafa Mustafa, beloved Arabic instructor and veritable bedrock of our department’s Arabic program, will be stepping away from the classroom to which he has lovingly devoted so much of his time and effort. We wish him our very best, and as he no doubt looks forward to engaging in further in-depth study of Arabic language and literature.
To close on a high note, I am delighted to announce two exceptionally well-timed and impactful endowments. One will support undergraduate students with a demonstrated interest and commitment to studying Arabic Language, while the other will underwrite Arabic language instruction in the department. On behalf of the entire ACS community, I offer my profound gratitude to the incredibly generous donors Terry and Barbara England. Their support, along with that of other donors, enable us to strengthen our commitment to enrich and expand our curricula in literature, language and culture, and sustain our department’s scholarly, pedagogic and excellence in diversity.
Sincerely,
Luís Madureira
Professor and Chair