[First posted on the GSA Facebook page on 2 January. Compiled by Carina Ray. Note: This list is based on members’ response to the call to submit articles, books, awards, etc.]
2015 was an incredibly productive year for GSA members. Here’s a look back at some of what we accomplished.
New Books
Akosua Adomako Ampofo (co-editor). Discourses in African Musicology. Festschrift in Honor of Emeritus Professor Nketia: Discourses in African Musicology.
Kate Skinner, The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914-2014 (Cambridge UP)
Mensah Adinkrah, _Witchcraft, Witches and Violence in Ghana (Berghahn Books).
John Collins, Fela: Kalakuta Notes (Wesleyan University Press)
Birgit Meyer, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana_ (University of California Press)
Carina Ray, Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press)
Paul Schauert, Staging Ghana: Artistry and Nationalism in State Dance Ensembles (Indiana University Press)
Weaver Jesse, Trickster Theatre: The Poetics of Freedom in Urban Africa (Indiana University Press)
Journal Articles, Book Chapters and Working Papers
Mensah Adinkrah, “Suicide and Mortuary Beliefs and Practices of the Akan of Ghana,” Omega: Journal of Death and Dying.
Nana Akua Anyidoho and Josephine Akosua Adomako Ampofo, “‘How can I come to work on Saturday when I have a family?’: Ghanaian women and bank work in a neo-liberal era” in Transatlantic feminisms: women and Gender Studies in Africa and the diaspora (Lexington Books).
Nana Akua Anyidoho and Takyiwaa Manuh, “To Beijing and back: Reflections on the influence of the Beijing Conference on popular notions of women’s empowerment in Ghana,” IDS Bulletin.
Nana Akua Anyidoho, et al. “Young people, agriculture, and employment in rural Africa” in African youth and the persistence of marginalization: employment, politics, and prospects for change (Routledge).
Sandra Greene, “Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa,” Slavery and Abolition.
Karen Lauterbach, “Religious Entrepreneurs in Ghana” in Cultural Entrepreneurship in Africa (Routledge) 19-36.
Carola Lentz, “Elites or middle classes? Lessons from transnational research for the study of social stratification in Africa.” Working Papers of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 161, 2015 [URL: http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/AP_161.pdf].
Carola Lentz, “Anthropology in the twenty-first century: a view of, and from, Germany” (with Thomas Bierschenk and Matthias Krings). Working Papers of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 160, 2015 [URL: http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/AP_160.pdf].
Rebecca Shumway, “From Atlantic Creoles to African Nationalists: Reflections on the Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Fanteland,” History in Africa: A Journal of Method.
Rebecca Shumway, “Palavers and Treaty-Making in the British Acquisition of the Gold Coast Colony (West Africa)” in Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600-1900 (Oxford University Press).
Awards, Grants, Honors, and Appointments:
Dzodzi Tsikata was elected President of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the largest “independent pan-African research organisation primarily focusing on social sciences research in Africa”.
Jean Allman received the GSA’s inaugural Boahen-Wilks Article Prize for “Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, A Nazi Pilot Named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing,” which appeared in The American Historical Review.
Akosua Adomako Ampofo delivered the African Studies Review Distinguished lecture at ASA 2015.
Patricia Serwaa Afrifa won a 2015 GSA Research Grant to support her work on “Formalised Childcare Arrangements in Ghana: A Study of Selected Day Care Centres in Accra.”
Samson Ninfaazu won a 2015 GSA Research Grant to support his work on “Disambiguating the ambiguities: a socio-historical study of the Lobi of northwestern Ghana.”
Patience Gyamenah won a 2015 GSA Research Grant to support her work on “Culture and healthcare pluralism among Akan cancer patients in Ghana.”
David Amponsah successfully defended his PhD dissertation on the politics of indigenous religion in colonial and post-colonial Ghana at Harvard University (Religious Studies).
Adams Bodomo was appointed Chair Professor of African Languages and Literatures at the University of Vienna, making him the first black person to hold such a position at the University of Vienna.
Manna Duah was awarded a 2015 SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship.
Sandra Greene was elected and inducted into the Class of African Studies Scholars, Ambrosiana Academy, Milan Italy for her work on West African history. This is a lifetime appointment.
Abdulai Iddrisu was granted tenure and promotion at St. Olaf College.
Carola Lentz became a Fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study (Delmenhorst). She also continued in her position as President of the German Anthropological Association.
Nimoh Michael successfully defended his PhD thesis on labour unrest in Ghana at KNUST (Historical Studies).
Paul Nugent was awarded a 5-year €2.5 million European Research Council Advanced Grant to support a comparative project entitled “African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors and Port Cities in Transition” (AFRIGOS).
Abena Dove Osseo-Asare received the African Studies Association’s 2015 Herskovits Prize and the American Historical Association’s Pacific Coast Branch Book Award for _Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa_ (University of Chicago Press).
Ato Quayson received the Urban History Association’s Best Book Prize (2013-2014) for Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and Itineraries of Transnationalism (Duke University Press).
Carina Ray received the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ Article Prize for “Decrying White Peril: Interracial Sex and the Rise of Anticolonial Nationalism in the Gold Coast,” which appeared in The American Historical Review.
Ben Talton was elected to the Executive Board of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora.