News & Articles .::. UCLA Africa Studies Center

Linguist Harold Torrence, chair of the African Studies M.A. Program, teaches a field methods class every year in which he and his UCLA students work on a language none of them has ever studied before.

Posted: 5/20/2019

Two UCLA scholars receive ACLS Fellowships

Andrea Goldman (history) and Ippolytos Kalofonos, M.D./M.P.H. (Geffen School of Medicine/ International Institute) were recently awarded 2019 ACLS Fellowships. Goldman is a member of the faculty advisory committee of the Center for Chinese Studies; Kalofonos teaches in the Institute's Global Health Program.

Posted: 4/2/2019

Andrew Apter, an anthropologist among the historians*

Anthropologist-historian Andrew Apter, interim director of the African Studies Center, hopes to oversee a period of much greater undergraduate student involvement in its activities.

Posted: 1/16/2019

Award for new faculty book

Faculty members from two UCLA departments combined forces to report on a little-known minority group: Jewish communities in North Africa during the Holocaust.

Posted: 1/9/2019

New leaders, faculty join the International Institute

Several of the Institute's research centers and teaching programs have new faculty leaders as of July 1, 2018, and three new faculty have joined the Institute's academic teaching staff.

Posted: 7/2/2018

Colonial extractions: Race and Canadian mining in contemporary Africa

Canadian mining companies' presence on the African continent and their efforts to disempower indigenous artisanal miners are new iterations of colonial economic systems, said Paula Butler at the latest African Studies Speaker Series.

Posted: 5/31/2018

Celebrating female refugees and migrants as “women who move”

At the UCLA celebration of International Women's Day 2018, E. Tendayi Achiume discussed female refugees and migrants from the Global South as women who exert their agency to improve their lives.

Posted: 3/26/2018

“Waking Lions” depicts unseen Israelis

Speaking about her new novel at the Y&S Nazarian Center, Israeli author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen described the “unseen” Israel and the role of literature in revealing the things we don't want to know about ourselves.

Posted: 3/12/2018

From Aimé Césaire to Black Lives Matter: The ongoing impact of negritude

The latest speaker in the African Studies Center Speaker Series argued that Black Lives Matter and social media activism are a continuation of Aimé Césaire's writings on negritude.

Posted: 2/23/2018

The kola nut: West African commodity in the Atlantic world

Shantelle George presented her research to date on the kola nut's introduction into the Caribbean and its connections to African religion, medicinal practices and identity in the New World.

Posted: 12/15/2017

Erasing the intellectual divide between African American and African Studies

Jemima Pierre views slavery and colonialism as two sides of the same coin: a global process that intentionally flattened African identities into the racialized categories of “black” (in the Americas) and “native” (in Africa).

Posted: 10/16/2017

Kevin Njabo to speak in Tanzania about the Congo Basin Institute

The UCLA environmental health sciences professor was selected to give a TEDGlobal talk. "Let's stop painting Africa as a continent of darkness,” he said. “The Congo Basin Institute is that vision that gives a positive outlook of what Africa can be.”

Posted: 7/21/2017

Fowler exhibit explores Brazil's African cultural heritage

“Lineage through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil by Fran Siegel” considers the potential of Afro-Brazilians to transcend global displacement through ancestral rituals and symbolic systems that keep their connections to Africa alive.

Posted: 7/18/2017