African Studies at Wes

African Studies at Wes African Studies @ Wes is devoted to facilitating a deeper understanding and engagement with Africa for the Wesleyan Community and beyond.

Wesleyan University’s African Studies Cluster is devoted to facilitating a deeper understanding and engagement with Africa for the Wesleyan Community and beyond. We bring together a diverse array of courses focusing on Africa, culling the interests of faculty specializing in Africa from a wide variety of disciplines. This broadly interdisciplinary cluster focuses on a large geographic region that

is of great historical, cultural, political, and artistic importance and interest to American university students, not to mention American society in general. The cluster promotes interdisciplinary learning in the best of liberal arts traditions. Check out our student blogs @ http://africa.blogs.wesleyan.edu/

http://www.wesleyan.edu/africanstudies/

Join us!
04/22/2026

Join us!

Thinking about taking a class in AFST or pursuing the minor? Check out our fall 2026 listings!
03/30/2026

Thinking about taking a class in AFST or pursuing the minor? Check out our fall 2026 listings!

Check us out on our new Instagram page!
03/30/2026

Check us out on our new Instagram page!

Mark your calendars! Prof. Nwafor will present from his new book Exit of a Hero Thurs 4/2 @ 4:30 in Boger, 3rd floor
03/19/2026

Mark your calendars!
Prof. Nwafor will present from his new book Exit of a Hero
Thurs 4/2 @ 4:30 in Boger, 3rd floor

Come check out our exhibit and activity table at the Pop-up Museum! Next Saturday 2/28 from 2-4pm in the Exley Lobby
02/22/2026

Come check out our exhibit and activity table at the Pop-up Museum! Next Saturday 2/28 from 2-4pm in the Exley Lobby

Talk Tomorrow! Thurs 2/19 in Downey 113 4:30 pmLéopold Sédar Senghor's Ethnological PhilologyIn 1975, cultural theorist...
02/18/2026

Talk Tomorrow! Thurs 2/19 in Downey 113 4:30 pm
Léopold Sédar Senghor's Ethnological Philology

In 1975, cultural theorist, poet, and first president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor and first president of Tunisia Habib Bourguiba convened the first All-African Parties Conference in Tunis. For the occasion, Senghor composed his “Élégie de Carthage,” a poem on three exemplary ancient North Africans: Dido, Hannibal, and Jugurtha. His characterization of the Carthaginian queen is tragic, if unsympathetic, while his depictions of the latter two leaders express admiration for their ability to unify Africans in valiant, if ultimately doomed, challenges to Rome. Although Dido is the only character portrayed as non-Black in the poem’s unabashed expression of Black pride, her sin, in the Senghor’s eyes, does not lie in her skin color but in running toward the (white) people and gods that will destroy her , in the process spurning her adoptive homeland.

This lecture uses Senghor's “Élégie de Carthage" as a way into thinking about the relationship of Greco-Roman antiquity to the scholarly endeavors and politics of the president/theorist. Senghor was the first Black African grammar professeur agrégé (Latin, Greek, and French) in France, and although many studies in recent years have turned their attention to Senghor (Wilder, 2014; Cooper, 2014; Rabaka, 2015), and many acknowledge Senghor's life as a classicist, none thoroughly explores it. This talk reconstructs Senghor's combination of classical philology with European ethnology to demonstrate that a vision of a Black antiquity informed much of Senghor's literature, politics, and thought.

Tomorrow (Tues 2/3) at noon! Global Technologies, Local Innovations: Reconstructing Circulation and Production Strategie...
02/02/2026

Tomorrow (Tues 2/3) at noon!
Global Technologies, Local Innovations: Reconstructing Circulation and Production Strategies for Copper and bronze at Mapunbuwe, South Africa's First State
Talk by Dr. Jay Stephens in Exley 309

Want to add an African Studies class and learn more and women's and gender studies? HIST226: Queen Mothers, Unruly Women...
01/28/2026

Want to add an African Studies class and learn more and women's and gender studies? HIST226: Queen Mothers, Unruly Women has open spots! Join us!

(Note the room has changed to PAC309).

Address

45 Wyllys Avenue
Middletown, CT
06459

Website

https://www.instagram.com/africanstudies_wes/

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