Description:

Both discourse and a historical condition defined by the reconciliation of African identities, Islamic forms of life, and global political liberalism, African Islamic modernity animates contemporary discourses of the Senegalese exception. The small West African country with a long history of entanglement with the development of the modern economy via the slave trade and its importance in the colonizing process is often touted as an exceptional country in several respects. This talk will present the major episodes of this history.

Wendell Marsh is a Northwestern Buffett postdoctoral fellow. His work seeks to decentralize the study of Islam from the classical Arab heartlands by locating debates over religious authority in French West Africa within an equivocal tradition of argument and dissent specific to the region. He has been awarded Fulbright, Ford, and Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships for his work. Marsh is an assistant professor of African American and African Studies at Rutgers University-Newark.

The Northwestern Buffett Faculty & Fellows Colloquium brings together an interdisciplinary audience to build awareness of global research on campus. This series promotes dialogue on scholarship and develops a deeper sense of community among Buffett Institute affiliates. Each meeting lasts one hour; lunch is provided.