At last, the GSA’s Year in Review (2016) is finally here! Viewing our many accomplishments from the distance that February affords makes them appear all the more impressive! GSA members have published new books and innovative articles in leading journals, while also editing a dynamic range of special issues and edited collections. Our brilliance and professional service have been recognized by induction into a variety of prestigious academic societies and we’ve taken home some of our respective discipline’s top awards. We’re visible in local, regional, national, and international scholarly organizations and institutions, and in several instances we’re at the helm of them too. All the while we maintain the congenial and supportive ethos which is the hallmark of the GSA community.
Akosua Adomako Ampofo was inducted into the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jean Allman is P.I. on the National Endowment for the Humanities, Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning Grant, “Cohorts, Courses, Qualifications, and Careers: Reconceptualizing the Humanities PhD at Washington University in St. Louis.” In 2016-2017 Jean is also serving as Vice-President of the African Studies Association, and will assume the presidency of the ASA for 2017-2018.
Nana Akua Anyidoho
Publications
Anyidoho, N.A. & Steel, W.F. Informal-formal linkages in market and street trading in Accra. African Review of Economics and Finance, 8(2), 171-200.
Steel, W.F., Anyidoho, N.A., Dadzie, F.Y. & Hosier, R.H. Developing rural markets for solar products: Lessons from Ghana. Energy for Sustainable Development, 31, 178-184.
Yeboah, T., Sumberg, J., Flynn, J. & Anyidoho, N.A. What is a desirable job? What makes a job desirable? Findings from a Q study with students and parents in rural Ghana. European Journal of Development Research,
Gareth Austin
Publications
‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ in Joerg Baten (ed.), A History of the Global Economy from 1500 to the Present (Cambridge University Press), pp. 316-50.
‘Is Africa too late for “late development”? Gerschenkron south of the Sahara’, in Diverse Development Paths and Structural Transformation in the Escape from Poverty, edited by Martin Andersson and Tobias Axelsson (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 206-35.
‘Comment: the return of capitalism as a concept’ in Capitalism: the Reemergence of a Historical Concept, edited by Jürgen Kocka and Marcel van der Linden (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), pp. 207-34.
Scholarly Awards and Activities:
Chair of Economic History at Cambridge University.
Gretchen Bauer
Publications
With Josephine Dawuni, eds. 2016. Gender and the Judiciary in Africa: From Obscurity to Parity? New York: Routledge.
“’A Lot of Head Wraps’: African Contributions to the Third Wave of Electoral Gender Quotas,” Politics, Groups and Identities, 2016. 4(2): 196-213.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Fulbright Scholar award, LECIAD and CEGENSA, University of Ghana, Legon
Fulbright Specialist Roster (2016-2021).
Sara Berry received the Distinguished Africanist award from the African Studies Association.
George Bob-Milliar
Publications
Lauren M. MacLean, George M. Bob-Milliar, Liz Baldwin & Elisa Dickey (December, 2016). “The Construction of Citizenship and the Public Provision of Electricity for the 2014 World Cup in Ghana,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp.555-590.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Visiting Research Fellow, Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.
Head of Department, History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Kumasi-Ghana.
Florian Carl
Publications
With Eric D. Otchere (eds.). Music, Health and Wellbeing: African Perspectives (Special Guest-Edited Issue of the Legon Journal of the Humanities, vol. 27, no. 2). Legon, Ghana: College of Humanities, University of Ghana.
With Rosemond Kutsidzo. “Music and Wellbeing in Everyday Life in Ghana: An Exploratory Study.” Legon Journal of the Humanities 27(2): 36-58. DOI: 10.4314/ljh.v27i2.3
With Eric D. Otchere. “On the Music Preferences of Ghanaian Undergraduate Students: A Word or Two.” West African Journal of Musical Arts Education 3(1):75-93.
Cati Coe
Publications
“Not a Nurse, Not Househelp: The New Occupation of Elder Carer in Urban Ghana.” In “Aging in Ghana,” a special issue of Ghana Studies 19(1): 46-72, edited by Ama de-Graft Aikins and Nana Araba Apt.
“Longing for a House: Ghanaians’ Responses to the Dignity Threats of Elder Care Work in the United States.” Ethos 44(3): 352-374.
“Orchestrating Care in Time: Ghanaian Migrant Women, Family, and Reciprocity.” American Anthropologist 118(1): 37-48.
“Translations in Kinscripts: Child Circulation among Ghanaians Abroad.” In Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration. Edited by Jennifer Cole and Christian Groes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
“Child Circulation and West African Migrations.” In Geographies of Children and Young People: Vol 6, Movements, Mobilities and Journeys. Edited by Caitríona Ní Laoire, Allen White, and Tracey Skelton. Singapore: Springer-Verlag, September.
Scholarly Activities and Awards
International Senior Fellow, University of Bayreuth. Research grant to support international collaboration with Dr. Erdmute Alber, “Changing Age-Scripts in West Africa.” (2017-2020)
Ebony Coletu and Kendra Field received the GSA’s 2016 Boahen-Wilks Article Prize for their their brilliant co-authored piece, “The Chief Sam Movement, A Century Later”, in Transition, No. 114, Gay Nigeria (2014), pp. 108-130
Harcourt Fuller’s Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess (www.nannythemovie.com), received a Spirit Award from the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series in NYC, as well as a Citation from the New York City Council. Fuller was also the executive producer of “Granny Nanny Come Oh: Jamaican Maroon Kromanti and Kumina Music and Other Oral Traditions,” a double-CD by the Moore Town Granny Nanny Cultural Group, who recently completed a 3-month tour of the United States. It features 31 tracks of live studio recordings of traditional Jamaican Maroon and Bongo-Kumina songs, drumming and other instrumentals, oral history, stories, African language retentions (including Twi and Kikongo), and other verbal arts. The album, which was recorded at the Jamaica Music Institute Recording Studio (JaMIN) in Trench Town, Jamaica, also features a 40-page color booklet with photographs and information about Maroon history and music.
Carly Goodman defended her dissertation, “Global Game of Chance: The U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery, Transnational Migration, and Cultural Diplomacy in Africa, 1990-2016,” and received her Ph.D. in History from Temple University. She was named a 2016 Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and is a Communications Analyst at American Friends Service Committee.
Sandra Greene
Publications
African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein. New York: Cambridge University Press.
“African Intellectual Ideas in the Age of Legal Slavery and the Slave Trade,” with Oluwatoyin B. Oduntan. In Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, and Martin Klein (eds.) African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Cambridge University Press.
“Christian Missionaries on Record: Documenting Slavery and the Slave Trade from the late Fifteenth to the early Twentieth Century,” in African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Edited with Alice Bellagamba and Martin A. Klein. New York: Cambridge University Press.
“Introduction,” with Alice Bellagamba and Martin Klein (eds.). African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, Volume 2: Essays on Sources and Methods. Cambridge University Press.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS)
Elected by the Cornell University Board of Trustees to hold the Stephen ’59 and Madeline ’60 Anbinder Endowed Chair
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) selected Sandra’s book, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast, for e-publication as a high quality text in the humanities because of its continuing importance for teaching and research.
Leslie James
“Trans-Atlantic Passages: black identity construction in West African and West Indian newspapers, 1935-1950”. In D. Peterson, S. Newell, and E. Hunter (eds.)
African Print Cultures. (University of Michigan Press, 2016): 49-74.
“Ambiguity and Imprint: British racial logics, colonial commissions, and the creolisation of Britain in the 1930s and 1940s”. With D. Whittall. Calalloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters 39, no. 1 (2016): 166-184.
“Activating the Past” The Critique Magazine (September-October 2016)
Dennis Laumann was promoted to full professor at the University of Memphis and his widely read text _Colonial Africa, 1884-1994_ was translated into Arabic by Belabbes Ali Abdelhafid and published in Algeria.
Atta Kwami
Publications
“Vincent Akwete Kofi”; “Oku Ampofo”; and “The Akwapim Six” in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism
“#19 Prelude to the Microcron No. 14 by Owusu-Ankomah”
“Kumasi Realism: Alex Amofa,” In The Ghana Reader: History, Culture,
Politics, Kwasi Konadu and Clifford C. Campbell, eds, (Duke University Press), pp. 416-421.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
2016 Thami Mnyele Foundation Award
Karen Lauterbach published Christianity, Wealth, and Spiritual Power in Ghana (Palgrave Macmillan).
Carola Lentz
Publications
“African middle classes: lessons from transnational studies and a research agenda.” In Henning Melber (Hg.), The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class: Myths, Realities and Critical Engagements. London: Zed Books, 2016, 17‑53.
“A lasting memory: the contested history of the Nkrumah statue.” In Bea Lundt and Christoph Marx (eds.), Kwame Nkrumah 1909−1972: A Controversial African Visionary. Historische Mitteilungen, Beiheft 96. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016, 153‑84
“World anthropology with an accent: the discipline in Germany since the 1970s,” with Bierschenk and Matthias Krings. American Anthropologist 118 (2), 2016: 364‑80.
“Culture: the making, unmaking and remaking of an anthropological concept.” Working Papers of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 166, 2016 [URL: http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/AP166.pf
Scholarly Awards and Activities
Together with Konstanze N’Guessan, Carola organized a panel, The un/doing of national belonging in African public rituals and performances, which was sponsored by Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, and took place at the ASAUK Biennial Conference 2016, Cambridge (UK), September 2016. Since January 2016 she is also serving as the chairperson of the Social Sciences Class in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Carina Ray
Publications
“Oxford Street, Accra: Rethinking the Roots of Cosmopolitanism from an Africanist Historian’s Perspective,” PMLA 131:2 (2016), 505-514.
Scholarly Awards and Activities
2016 Wesley-Logan Book Prize for African Diaspora History, American Historical Association
Society for the Humanities Fellowship, Cornell University
Editor, Ghana Studies
Founding Editor (with Toyin Falola), African Identities, Cambridge University Press Book Series
Dzodzi Tsikata was appointed Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and inducted into the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sjaak van der Geest
Publications
“Will families in Ghana continue to care for older people? Logic and contradiction in policy.”
In: J. Hoffman & K. Pype (eds) Ageing in Sub-Saharan Africa: Spaces and Practices of Care.
London: Policy Press, pp. 21-41.
“Why are the poor less covered in Ghana’s national health insurance? A critical analysis of policy and practice,” with A.M. Kotoh, International Journal for Equity in Health 15:34.
“Studying older people in Ghana: Closing reflections.” Ghana Studies 19 (1): 190-201.
[compiled by Carina Ray from information submitted by GSA members]