Event

In-Person: College Hall 209, 5:00 pm

Virtual: ZOOM LINK

Cheikh Anta Babou is a historian of Islam and the modern West African Muslim diaspora. He joined the history department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 2002.  Educated at University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar and Michigan State University, Dr. Babou is the author of Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–2013 (2007), and The Muridiyya on the Move. Islam, Migration, and Place Making (2021).  Babou offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses on topics related to ancient African history, colonial rule, decolonization, Islam, religion and politics, migration and the new African diaspora.

Lee Cassanelli teaches African history and historiography, the history of foreign aid in Africa, and comparative world history. His research interests focus on the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) from the 18th to the 20th century.  His books and monographs include The Shaping of Somali Society 1600-1900; Victims and Vulnerable Groups in Southern Somalia; a co-edited collection on The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War. He is currently working on a collection of essays on the uses of the past in contemporary political and cultural debates in the Horn of Africa, exploring how individuals and communities rethink and remake their histories in times of war, displacement, and resettlement.