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The Africa Institute Research Fellowships Program announces awardees of 2023’s cohort of senior fellowships and post-doctoral fellowships, each named after renowned icons for their work in African and African diaspora.
The program grows from strength to strength since its launch in 2021 enabling a stimulating platform and opportunity for both junior and senior scholars of African and African diaspora studies to focus on a research project and participate in ongoing scholarly and intellectual activities. It also grants fellows the benefit to interact with scholars and academics in their area of research with the aim to facilitate and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge exchange and enrich scholarly experiences and future projects.
Initiating their respective fellowships in September 2023, the awardees are as follows:
Idrissou Mora-Kpai
An award-winning Beninese filmmaker, recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and Prince Claus award, committed, for the past 25 years, to produce not only artistically compelling, but also socially relevant work that tells the stories of people underrepresented in mainstream productions. Idrissou’s filmography includes works such as his early narrative shorts, “Fugace” (1996), “Fake Soldiers (1999), pioneers in showcasing Black German life, as well as his documentary features, “Si-Gueriki, The Queen Mother” (2002), “Arlit, The Second Paris” (2005), “Indochina Traces of a Mother” (2011) and “America Street” (2019).
Mora-Kpai’s films have been screened world-wide at numerous prestigious festivals, such as Berlin, Rotterdam, Vienna, Milano, Busan, Marseille, Sheffield. His works have garnered many international accolades, including the Best Documentary Award, TV5 Award; 20th Namur International Festival of French- Speaking Film Festival, Namur, Belgium; Best Documentary Award, 15th African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival, Milan, Italia.
He has served as a visiting artist at Cornell University, a visiting professor at Duke University and the University of Pittsburgh and currently teaches Film Production at Ithaca College.
During his time at The Africa Institute, Mora-Kpai plans to work on two projects. He wants to pursue his work on a feature-length documentary “Border Life,” a creative documentary on Seme, the bustling border town between Nigeria and Benin, a place deeply intertwined with the lives of peddlers, smugglers, and travelers, thereby revealing a window into the localization of global economic exchanges. He also wants to work on the revision of his script for “Corporal Ganda,” a feature drama that tells the story of African colonial soldiers during the Indochina war. He is excited to use this opportunity to expand his professional network and search for potential collaborators and funding sources in the region.
Jeanette S. Jouili
Jouili is an Associate Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. As an anthropologist of religion, she is interested in the intersections between contemporary expressions of Islamic practice, secular governance, and processes of racialization, especially in a political context defined by the Global War on Terror.
Over the past twenty years, she has conducted ethnographic research in France, Germany and the UK among different Muslim communities. She has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Comparative Studies in Society and History, Anthropological Quarterly, Feminist Review, or French Politics, Culture & Society. She is the author of Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe (Stanford, 2015) and co-editor of the volume “Embodying Black Religion in Africa and its Diasporas: Memory, Movement and Belonging through the Body,” (Duke 2021). She is currently completing a book manuscript that explores a British Muslim popular culture scene spearheaded by Afro-Diasporic Muslims, in a context where Muslim youth cultures have become sites of intervention for various security-oriented government policies.
During her time in Sharjah, Jouili will also begin to work on a new project, an ethnographic study of the Zitouna University, the historical institution of Islamic higher learning in Tunisia that attracts local students as well as international students, especially from West Africa. In this project, she seeks to explore the complex and deep-seated secular-religious divisions in the country, as well as the socio-economic and epistemological inequalities that these divisions obscure, while paying attention to how questions around class, race, and gender give life to, reconfigure, undo, or reinforce these divisions.
Matthew S. Hopper
Hopper is a Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. His book, Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire (Yale University Press, 2015), was a finalist for the 2016 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He received his Ph.D. in History from UCLA, M.A. in African Studies from UCLA and M.A. in History from Temple University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University, a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the Smuts Visiting Research Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and Fulbright-Hays, and his writing has been published in Annales, Itinerario, and the Journal of African Development. As a fellow at the Institute, he will be writing a book on the history of liberated Africans in the Indian Ocean world.
Philathia Bolton
Inaugurating the first cohort of the Toni Morrison Senior Fellowship is Philathia Bolton, an Associate Professor of English at The University of Akron in Ohio where she serves on advisory committees for the Pan-African Studies Program and the Women Studies Program and is the English Department’s honors advisor. Her research interests involve 20th century African American literature, the U.S. civil rights movement, and critical race studies.
Bolton has lectured on subjects in these fields, locally, and has presented her research at national and international conferences, namely at the American Studies Association and the College Language Association conferences. She recently participated in a thematic residence program for writers at Faberlull in Spain (2019). There she collaborated with scholars from around the world on an edited collection of essays that examines the continued significance of gender disparities. Her essay looks at the historical significance and consequences of colorism in the U.S. with attention to this theme and from a literary perspective, taking as primary texts of consideration Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man (1912). Her current project for a volume devoted to Zora Neale Hurston seeks to show the ways in which the cultural significance of the vernacular in the Black American literary tradition elucidates how authors such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison could attempt a sovereign disposition for creating works that negated the dominating influence of the white gaze. At the Africa Institute, Bolton will continue her research and writing on Morrison by revisiting work she did on the novelist that connects the metaphoric significance of Macon Dead from Song of Solomon to certain novels by Black women writers of the 1970s and 1980s.
Bolton is a resident of Toni Morrison’s home state. She has involved herself in the community as an educator beyond her traditional classroom and as a supporter of the Arts, namely, teaching for the Upward Bound Program, presenting at book clubs for retirees, and recently serving as a board member of city and state-wide Arts organizations. Bolton is an alumna of Spelman College, where she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in English and with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Her master’s and doctor of philosophy degrees are in American Studies from Purdue University-West Lafayette.
The next intake of fellows in 2024 is open with a deadline slated on August 1, 2023. Click here learn more about eligibility and application details.
The Africa Institute Research Fellowships Program announces awardees of 2023’s cohort of senior fellowships and post-doctoral fellowships, each named after renowned icons for their work in African and African diaspora.
The Africa Institute Research Fellowships Program announces awardees of 2023’s cohort of senior fellowships and post-doctoral fellowships, each named after renowned icons for their work in African and African diaspora.
The program grows from strength to strength since its launch in 2021 enabling a stimulating platform and opportunity for both junior and senior scholars of African and African diaspora studies to focus on a research project and participate in ongoing scholarly and intellectual activities. It also grants fellows the benefit to interact with scholars and academics in their area of research with the aim to facilitate and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge exchange and enrich scholarly experiences and future projects.
Initiating their respective fellowships in September 2023, the awardees are as follows:
Idrissou Mora-Kpai
An award-winning Beninese filmmaker, recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and Prince Claus award, committed, for the past 25 years, to produce not only artistically compelling, but also socially relevant work that tells the stories of people underrepresented in mainstream productions. Idrissou’s filmography includes works such as his early narrative shorts, “Fugace” (1996), “Fake Soldiers (1999), pioneers in showcasing Black German life, as well as his documentary features, “Si-Gueriki, The Queen Mother” (2002), “Arlit, The Second Paris” (2005), “Indochina Traces of a Mother” (2011) and “America Street” (2019).
Mora-Kpai’s films have been screened world-wide at numerous prestigious festivals, such as Berlin, Rotterdam, Vienna, Milano, Busan, Marseille, Sheffield. His works have garnered many international accolades, including the Best Documentary Award, TV5 Award; 20th Namur International Festival of French- Speaking Film Festival, Namur, Belgium; Best Documentary Award, 15th African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival, Milan, Italia.
He has served as a visiting artist at Cornell University, a visiting professor at Duke University and the University of Pittsburgh and currently teaches Film Production at Ithaca College.
During his time at The Africa Institute, Mora-Kpai plans to work on two projects. He wants to pursue his work on a feature-length documentary “Border Life,” a creative documentary on Seme, the bustling border town between Nigeria and Benin, a place deeply intertwined with the lives of peddlers, smugglers, and travelers, thereby revealing a window into the localization of global economic exchanges. He also wants to work on the revision of his script for “Corporal Ganda,” a feature drama that tells the story of African colonial soldiers during the Indochina war. He is excited to use this opportunity to expand his professional network and search for potential collaborators and funding sources in the region.
Jeanette S. Jouili
Jouili is an Associate Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. As an anthropologist of religion, she is interested in the intersections between contemporary expressions of Islamic practice, secular governance, and processes of racialization, especially in a political context defined by the Global War on Terror.
Over the past twenty years, she has conducted ethnographic research in France, Germany and the UK among different Muslim communities. She has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Comparative Studies in Society and History, Anthropological Quarterly, Feminist Review, or French Politics, Culture & Society. She is the author of Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe (Stanford, 2015) and co-editor of the volume “Embodying Black Religion in Africa and its Diasporas: Memory, Movement and Belonging through the Body,” (Duke 2021). She is currently completing a book manuscript that explores a British Muslim popular culture scene spearheaded by Afro-Diasporic Muslims, in a context where Muslim youth cultures have become sites of intervention for various security-oriented government policies.
During her time in Sharjah, Jouili will also begin to work on a new project, an ethnographic study of the Zitouna University, the historical institution of Islamic higher learning in Tunisia that attracts local students as well as international students, especially from West Africa. In this project, she seeks to explore the complex and deep-seated secular-religious divisions in the country, as well as the socio-economic and epistemological inequalities that these divisions obscure, while paying attention to how questions around class, race, and gender give life to, reconfigure, undo, or reinforce these divisions.
Matthew S. Hopper
Hopper is a Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. His book, Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire (Yale University Press, 2015), was a finalist for the 2016 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He received his Ph.D. in History from UCLA, M.A. in African Studies from UCLA and M.A. in History from Temple University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University, a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the Smuts Visiting Research Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and Fulbright-Hays, and his writing has been published in Annales, Itinerario, and the Journal of African Development. As a fellow at the Institute, he will be writing a book on the history of liberated Africans in the Indian Ocean world.
Philathia Bolton
Inaugurating the first cohort of the Toni Morrison Senior Fellowship is Philathia Bolton, an Associate Professor of English at The University of Akron in Ohio where she serves on advisory committees for the Pan-African Studies Program and the Women Studies Program and is the English Department’s honors advisor. Her research interests involve 20th century African American literature, the U.S. civil rights movement, and critical race studies.
Bolton has lectured on subjects in these fields, locally, and has presented her research at national and international conferences, namely at the American Studies Association and the College Language Association conferences. She recently participated in a thematic residence program for writers at Faberlull in Spain (2019). There she collaborated with scholars from around the world on an edited collection of essays that examines the continued significance of gender disparities. Her essay looks at the historical significance and consequences of colorism in the U.S. with attention to this theme and from a literary perspective, taking as primary texts of consideration Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man (1912). Her current project for a volume devoted to Zora Neale Hurston seeks to show the ways in which the cultural significance of the vernacular in the Black American literary tradition elucidates how authors such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison could attempt a sovereign disposition for creating works that negated the dominating influence of the white gaze. At the Africa Institute, Bolton will continue her research and writing on Morrison by revisiting work she did on the novelist that connects the metaphoric significance of Macon Dead from Song of Solomon to certain novels by Black women writers of the 1970s and 1980s.
Bolton is a resident of Toni Morrison’s home state. She has involved herself in the community as an educator beyond her traditional classroom and as a supporter of the Arts, namely, teaching for the Upward Bound Program, presenting at book clubs for retirees, and recently serving as a board member of city and state-wide Arts organizations. Bolton is an alumna of Spelman College, where she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in English and with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Her master’s and doctor of philosophy degrees are in American Studies from Purdue University-West Lafayette.
The next intake of fellows in 2024 is open with a deadline slated on August 1, 2023. Click here learn more about eligibility and application details.
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