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Africa Workshop

Ebony Coletu, Penn State University "The Undocumented Origins of African American Migration to Ghana"
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
4:00-6:00 PM
4701 (DAAS Conference Room) Haven Hall Map
My primary area of research addresses the rhetoric of application forms within a historical and sociological framework that accounts for the way biographic details are used to distribute institutional resources. My current book project, Forms of Submission: Writing for Aid and Opportunity in America explores a 125-year history of applications for financial support and college admission, and the ways institutions address problems with inequality at the level of the applicant’s biography.

The second area of research emerged from my previous position, teaching in the Rhetoric Department at The American University in Cairo, and through an affiliation with the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR). With Ira Dworkin, I co-edited a volume of Comparative American Studies on transnational American Studies in the Middle East and North Africa. I also have two forthcoming articles on Egypt, appearing in The Drama Review and Transition.

The third area of research represents my latest project as well as a shift from paperwork to logistics, in an exploration of a little-known back-to-Africa movement that resets the timeline for African American migration to Ghana. Building on research that began as a biography of my ancestor Alfred Charles Sam (1880-1932), the book reconstructs the logistical complexity and inspiration for an African organizing African American return to Ghana in 1915. Pan-African Logistics: Chief Sam and the Origins of African American Migration to Ghana identifies African descendants of the movement, the role of African Americans in an emerging West African nationalism, and the complex interface between blackness, business, and migration.

Recent and Forthcoming Publications


Application Forms/Paperwork:
Special Issue Editor,"Biographic Mediation: On the Uses of Disclosure in Bureaucracy and Politics,"Biography, forthcoming 2019.

“Funding the American Dream: On the Biographic Mediation of Aid and Institutional Change in Horatio Alger Scholarship Narratives, forthcoming, a/b: journal of auto/biographical studies, 33.1.

“Biographic Mediation,” Special Issue on What's Next? The Futures of Auto/Biographical Studies, a/b: journal of auto/biographical studies, 32:2, Spring 2017.

“Biographic Currency in Crisis,” in Occasion: Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal, Special Issue on States of Welfare, Vol 2 Dec 2010.

Transnational American Studies in the Middle East and Africa:
“A Complicated Embrace: Alex Haley’s Roots in Egypt,” Transition 122, 2017.

“On Demand and Relevance: Transnational American Studies in the Middle East and North Africa,” (w/Ira Dworkin), Introduction to Comparative American Studies Special issue, 13:4, Winter 2016.

“The Chief Sam Movement, A Century Later,” (w/Kendra Field) in Transition 114, 2014. (Winner of the 2016 Boahen-Wilks Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Article from the Ghana Studies Association)

Counter/Revolution in Egypt:
“Waiting for the Tragedy to Unfold: Protest, Performativity, and the Spectacle of Massacre at Rabaa Al Adawiya,” forthcoming, The Drama Review

“Visualizing Revolution: The Politics of Paint in Tahrir,” Jadaliyya, April 2012.

“Women in (Post) Revolutionary Egypt,” The Feminist Wire, April 2011.
Building: Haven Hall
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Africa, African American, History, immigration, International
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, African Studies Center