2024 ASA Teachers' Workshop
Islam in Africa
December 7, 2024 | Location: Online via Zoom
About the Workshop
Join us on Saturday, December 7, from 12-4pm ET, for our annual virtual African Studies Association Teachers' Workshop. The workshop will take place online via Zoom and will explore the history of Islam in Africa, architecture along the Gold Road, the diversity of Muslim identity, and more. Each session will feature a resource discussion, with a particular focus on The Gold Road Project, which highlights the people, places, and items related to the medieval Sudanic empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai. Please register to attend. More details will be shared below in the coming days. Check back for updates.
​Participants who attend the full workshop may be eligible to receive PDPs from Boston University, Indiana University, or the University of Minnesota.
Workshop Schedule
12:00 - 12:20PM ET: Welcome and Introductions
12:20 - 1:00PM ET: Fallou Ngom: Keynote: Ajami Manuscripts and the Illusion of Illiteracy in Africa
1:00 - 1:30PM ET: Ousman Kobo: An Introduction to Islam in Africa
1:30 - 1:40PM ET: BREAK
1:40 - 2:10PM ET: Nmadili Okwumabua: Sudano-Sahelian Architecture in Africa: Its Cultural Significance and Continued Relevance as an Environmentally Sustainable Architectural Model
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2:10- 2:20PM ET: BREAK
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2:20- 2:50PM ET: Sabrina Amrane: Textual Sources and the Making of West African History
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2:50- 3:00PM ET: BREAK
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3:00-3:20PM ET: Awa Saidy and Twalha Twaha Abass: The Diversity of Muslim Identity
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3:20-3:50PM ET: Islam and Africa in your Classroom | Resource and Activities Debrief
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3:50-4:00PM ET: Final Q&A and Closing
Workshop Details
Session One: 12:20-1:00PM ET
Keynote Address: Ajami Manuscripts and the Illusion of Illiteracy in Africa
Presenter Bio:
Prof. Fallou Ngom
Fallou Ngom is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. His research focuses on the interactions between African languages and non-African languages, the adaptations of Islam in Africa, and Ajami literatures (records of African languages written in Arabic script). He seeks to understand the knowledge buried in African Ajami literatures and the historical, social, cultural, and religious heritage that has found expression in this manner. He has held Fulbright, ACLS, and Guggenheim fellowships. His research has been supported by the British Library Endangered Archives Programme, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the US Department of Education. His work has appeared in African Studies Review, History Compass, Islamic Africa, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Language Variation and Change, and International Journal of the Sociology of Language. His book, Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of Ajami and the Muridyya (Oxford University Press, 2016), won the 2017 Melville J. Herskovits Prize for the best book in African studies.
Session Two: 1:00-1:30PM ET
An Introduction to Islam in Africa
Presenter Bio:
Prof. Ousman Murzik Kobo
Professor Ousman Murzik Kobo is an Associate Professor of History and is currently serving as the Director of the Center for Africa Studies at The Ohio State University. He earned his Ph.D. in History from University of Wisconsin-Madison and joined the History Department at OSU in 2006. His research and teaching interests include 20th century West African social and religious history; contemporary Islamic history; Islamic mysticism; Islam and European colonialism in Africa; Muslim ecumenical leadership in post-independent West Africa; and the social history of West African migrants in the United States. He has published widely on topics ranging from Islamic education during the 20th century, Muslim leadership in post-independent West Africa, and the politics of migration and citizenship in contemporary Africa and African diasporas in the Americas. He has received numerous grants and scholarships to further his research. He was also a visiting scholar at prestigious universities, including the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, Oxford University, Oxford (UK) and École des Hautes études en sciences socials (EHESS), Paris, France. Prof. Kobo has given his time and attention to community organizing and advocacy, especially among West African migrant Muslim communities in Columbus, Ohio, in Madison, Wisconsin, and in New York City. His teaching, mentorship and community services have been widely recognized through numerous awards from the Ohio State University, including Susan Hartman Mentorship Award, Ronald and Deborah Ratner Distinguished Teaching Award, Faculty Impact Award, and African Youth League award for Distinguished Community Leadership. He is also a committed mentor, seeking to ensure the success of students from underrepresented communities, as well as junior colleagues at the Ohio State University and at some African institutions of higher education, especially in Ghana, Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
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​His first book, Unveiling Modernity in Twentieth Century West African Islamic Reforms. Brill Publishers. 2012 has been read widely. His publications appear in many edited book volumes and numerous peer-reviewed journals including, Journal of African History, Journal of Islam in Africa, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journal of Modern African Studies, and Journal of Islamic Studies.
Session Three: 1:40-2:10PM ET
Sudano-Sahelian Architecture in Africa: Its Cultural Significance and Continued Relevance as an Environmentally Sustainable Architectural Model
Presenter Bio:
Nmadili Okwumabua
Nmadili Okwumabua is a cultural designer, urbanist and educator in African architecture and urban planning. Her passion for design is rooted in a vision where communities in Africa and the Diaspora are developed with new architectural languages that preserve heritage, and are culturally and environmentally sustainable. In 2005, she founded Southern Sahara USA, a research incubator for defining these new culture-informed design languages. The Community Planning & Design Initiative, Africa, CPDI Africa, was birthed in 2014 in response to these efforts, launching the first ever Afrocentric architecture design competitions worldwide. Her work in African and black culture architecture has been studied worldwide via her projects and lectures as a visiting professor, international design workshops and the Art of African Architecture, a curated exhibition of winning designs from CPDI Africa bi-annual competitions.
Ms. Okwumabua launched the Global Studio for African Centered Architecture (GSACA) in 2021, the premier academy for teaching this new pedagogy to shapers of the envisioned future. In 2024 she opened the Center for Afrocentric Design Advancement (CADA), at the African University of Science & Technology, Nigeria, one of the three prestigious Mandela Institutes. The hub serves as a resource center for Afrocentric curriculums, research publications, documentary film, and sustainable, standardized local building materials.
Nmadilis Okwumabuas’ career as a built environment professional span over 30 years. She studied architecture at the University of Tennessee, and earned her bachelors in Community Planning & Development from Georgia State University. She holds a master’s degree in African & African American studies from Clark Atlanta University. She is a licensed Realtor in the State of Georgia and a Certified Property Manager with Broll CBRE South Africa. Nmadili Okwumabua lives and works in Atlanta Georgia and Abuja Nigeria.
Session Four: 2:20-2:50PM ET
Textual Sources and the Making of West African History
Presenter Bio:
Sabrina Amrane
Sabrina Amrane is a graduate student at UC Berkeley, with a focus on African history. Specifically, her research explores the political thrust of major but overlooked oasis cities within the wider trans-Saharan network, interactions between key Saharan actors and coastal imperial rule, and conceptions of territoriality within a nomadic milieu in the medieval Maghrib. Drawing on repositories of written material and collecting oral histories, she aims to examine the geographic imagination of Arabs and Berbers in the central Algerian Sahara.
