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Summary: Prof. Paul Zeleza will give a talk about his book Africa's Resurgence: Domestic, Global and Diaspora Transformations. This book offers a multifaceted portrait of Africa's resurgence after decades of postcolonial authoritarianism and underdevelopment. It explores the social and economic transformations of African societies over the past 50 years, the struggles for democratization and human rights including most recently the rise of the Arab Spring and its impact, the thickening circuits of regional interconnections and engagements with the diaspora most poignantly captured by the rise of the Obama phenomenon, and the shifting constructions and representations of Africa in the popular and scholarly literature. It is a bold reexamination of Africa's complex historical afflictions and legacies, its contemporary mixed fortunes, and of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the continent in a globalized world.

Bio: Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. He previously held the positions of Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and President's Professor at Loyola Marymount University, Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He also served as college principal and professor of history at Trent University in Canada. Zeleza has published more than 300 essays and over two-dozen books including most recently, In Search of African Diasporas Testimonies and Encounters (2012). Several of his books and essays have won international awards. His research project on the African academic diaspora led to the establishment of the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellows Program in 2013, which sponsors as many as 100 African-born academics in the United State and Canada to work with African universities.