In Memoriam: Professor James Searing (1953—2012)
Toyin Falola
The University of Texas at Austin
"Jim dropped keys for his students all day long, giving them tools they will continue to use to enlarge their worlds, their minds, and their possibilities."
–—Laura Hostetler
I was too traumatized to write this . . . and I need to start with our recent encounters which made the news too difficult to process:
October 4th: I was at the University of Illinois at Chicago for the conference on Slavery and its Aftermath in the Atlantic World. It was a lovely day, with James Searing, and a host of others later going to the Residence of the British Consul for a lavish reception. We shared laughter.
October 5th He introduced me as the keynote speaker; a remarkable speech, very well written and presented with eloquence. On that evening we visited the university's new exhibition on Sierra Leone and had dinner together.
October 6th : He was approached to publish the introduction on me in a forthcoming book
October 10th+: We began a dialogue on how UNESCO would be involved UIC's special collection on African history.
November 29th: I saw him in Philadelphia at the African Studies Association annual meeting.
December 1st: I saw him in the morning.
December 4th: His demise was communicated to me. I could not believe it. Thrown into confusion, I cancelled my classes, and the pain was so much that it took this long to compose myself.
A scholar may fulfill many roles during his lifetime. Nonetheless, Dr. James F. Searing (affectionately called Jim) led a life, in which he dedicated the utmost excellence to any and every role he was placed in. However, this was not confined to his own personal success. Rather, Jim Searing spent his life laying foundations for the achievement of others. In light of these tremendous contributions, his passing is even more unfortunate, but the keys he dropped and the doors he unlocked during his time on the planet will last much longer than his physical existence. In these continuing contributions, Jim Searinglives on!
Jim began his academic development at Fairhaven College, Western Washington University. In 1975, he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in English and German Literature. By 1979, he had acquired his Master's degree in African and Modern France History from the University of Washington, and only six years later, he completed the Princeton doctoral program in African History. Since then, Jim wrote a number of influential pieces of scholarship throughout the course of several prestigious university appointments.
Jim began his teaching career at Franklin and Marshall College as a Visiting Assistant Professor from 1985 to 1986. He then lectured at Princeton until 1988. Following this, he had the honor of giving lectures in Senegal under the auspices of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship. He then returned to Princeton in 1990, where he lectured until 1992. He was subsequently hired as a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he did what he did best (teaching, researching, and performing exemplary service) until his recent passing. His CV features a laundry list of services he generously provided to the academic community as well as an impressive array of awards. Jim served in roles such as the Chairperson of the University of Illinois at Chicago's History Department for over five years, and he organized numerous professional conferences. Apart from the Fulbright awardthat brought him to West Africa, his award credentials include such honors as becoming a Fellow at the Institute for Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Jim's research focused specifically on the history of Senegal. However, his scholarship utilized an enriching ethnographic approach, which sought to understand historical intersections between Islam and the Atlantic world. These pursuits led to the publication of two seminal books: West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1993), which describes how the growth of the Atlantic trade stimulated the development of slavery within the Senegal River valley. In this book, he explores the role of local slaves working in the Senegal River basin, the coastal trade network, and the agricultural fields designed to feed slaves in transit to the New World. Invariably, his research redefined the historiography of the Atlantic slave trade by exploring the global intersection of this local slavery system and its consequences for the trans-Atlantic trade. Some of the implications described include detailed accounts of religious protest, slave rebellions, and ecological crises caused by agricultural allotment.
Jim's more recent book, "God Alone is King": Islam and Emancipation in Senegal, 1859-1914: The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol (Portsmouth, 2001), presents African history from an African point of view. He attempted to decolonize history itself byfocusing on Wolof historical agency, analysis of French archival records, and a Wolof-centric chronology of evolution. The work argues that the French colonial conquest of Senegal occurred as a feature of a Wolof civil war. In particular, it offers fresh insights on how the struggle between Islam and the indigenous monarchy, as depicted by the Muslim rebellion of 1859, shaped diplomatic cooperation between the French and Wolof aristocrats. This inevitably helps to contextualize the basis for France's colonial institutions in the region. Furthermore, Jim's research in this work portrays a new peasant economy, which emerged in the wake of slavery with the influx of cash crop agriculture.
As shown in his books, Jim's desire to interpret the full context of French colonial rule led him to spare no effort in understanding Senegal's narrative from multiple perspectives. In order to organize a full account of Senegalese agency, one must have a complete understanding of the Franco-centric history of Africa. Jim Searing made every attempt to achieve this standard. Much of the research for his degrees involved France in Senegal. Articles and chapters such as "Blancs' et 'noirs' à la frontière du désert mauritanien: notes critiques sur le livre de James Webb" and "Guerre civile et conquête coloniale au Sénégal" are illustrative of a mastery of French language and a dedication to a well-rounded approach in his scholarship.
His current research examined ethnicity and conversion through the fieldwork-based study on the Sereer-Safèn, an ethnic minority in the Thiès region of Senegal. These people converted to Islam in the colonial period. He was in the midst of providing prestigious journal essays with a steady stream of publications related to that project, including, "''No Kings, No Lords, No Slaves': Ethnicity and Religion among the Sereer-Safèn of Western Bawol (Senegal), 1700—1914," "Conversion to Islam: Military Recruitment and Generational Conflict in a Sereer-Safèn Village (Bandia), 1920—1938," and "The Time of Conversion: Christian and Muslims among the Sereer-Safèn of Senegal, 1914—1950s."
Shortly before his death, Jim also worked to introduce negotiations with the United Nations. This communication secured recognition for the University of Illinois at Chicago's Daley Library's Special Collection on Sierra Leone, the African slave trade, and the Caribbean. It occurred as a part of UIC's participation in UNESCO's Decade for People of African Descent project.
Jim will beremembered as a remarkable teacher with an unbridled commitment to his scholarship and, indeed, students as well. He loved introducing undergraduate students to key concepts in history. He even taught a class solely on historical methodology. For his graduate students, he is said to have been "a tireless advocate . . . always offering a humane perspective" to the profession his students were pursuing. At his college, Searing founded the graduate concentration in Encounters, Empires, and Ethnography, which brought together several of the unique talents of his department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In this, Searing leaves a legacy of sophisticated and dedicated perspectives with enduring impacts on the history of Africa and the Atlantic World.
Above all, Jim Searing will be missed by his wife, Patricia Hickling, and his three children. However, he has impacted the lives of many, even in everyday encounters. Their stories, abridged and showcased below, are a testament to his legacy:
I have been too shocked by the sad news of Jim's passing to join in theeulogies until now— not least because one of the highlights of the meeting of the ASA last week for me was a lively, witty, smart, and engaging chat with Jim about approaches to teaching the survey of early African history that we discovered that we shared. I think that we all felt that way about Jim— a stimulating colleague in a spirit of warm friendship. Fortunately we have asolid corpus of his thought in published form. It won't be the same without the thinker, and friend.
__Joe Miller
This is very devastating news. When Jim was Fulbrighter in Dakar in 1989, I lived with my family a block away. We both had children: he and his wife a newborn, and a wonderful, Pippy-Longstocking, brilliant daughter, Alison. She played with my two boys almost every day, and it was charming to see them skip over to the Searings' house, greeting the guardians on the way. Every Sunday we went out on the ferry to take the kids to the beach. We got the same snacksevery time. We returned to the Place de l'Independence which, in those days, had bumper cars where the kids had to go, before returning on the bus. Theyplayed 'favorite word' games on the bus home. Jim was brilliant, the premier Senegalese historian, then the young up and coming historian, his work already highly respected.
__Ken Harrow
The passing of Professor Searing is a real loss. He was an independent thinker and an historian of the first rank. He will be missed.
—Gregory Mann
I only had the privilege of knowing Prof. Searing this past semester, but the fourteen weeks that I was lucky enough to have under his teaching were incredibly eye-opening. I never knew or paid much attention to African culture or history until this past spring, when I read the novel Things Fall Apart. It made me realize that there was more to Africa than the images we see on television and the explanations we get in passing in elementary school when we learn about the Atlantic slave trade, and that I ought to learn what that "more" was all about.
I took Prof. Searing's class because I thought it would be interesting. It was so much more than just interesting. Being able to get such in-depth focus on the cultures, traditions, beliefs, and customs of the different historical kingdoms and chiefdoms of pre-colonial Africa not only let me understand what things were like then, but also how and why things are the way they are now. Prof. Searing helped me see that there is still so much about the world that I have yet to learn, and I was lucky enough to have him illuminate a little of that for me.
I really wish I would have had the chance to get to know him better. I could tell, though, that he had a real passion and love for his work and his field, and he was one of the most enthusiastic professors I have ever had. I remember how excited I was when I realized one day during lecture that the cultural traditions he was discussing sounded an awful lot like the ones I'd read about in Things Fall Apart, and I was thrilled when, after class, he confirmed for me that the group in the novel were the Igbo. He just laughed. He always took the time to patiently answer my questionsafter class, no matter how inane they might be. It was an honor to be his student and to have him affect my life somehow, and I will miss him. My deepest condolences to his family, to whom I wish all the best, as well as his friends, colleagues, students, and anyone else he may have touchedduring his lifetime.
—Nadia Maragha
Jim's Farewell
My last encounter with Jim took place at the hotel where the ASA annualmeeting was held in Philadelphia two weeks ago. On the morning of Friday, November 30, we met around the Starbucks Coffee around 10:00. He wanted to attend a panel and I wanted coffee. I tried to convince him to have coffee with me and he tried to convince me to go with him to the panel. We talked about his work and our overlapping interests, and he graciously agreed to read some chapters of my current book project, which draws from his seminal work. Thus, I was devastated to learn that Jim had passed away a few days later. I did not believe it at first, since I thought there must be several "Jim Searings," and a Google search I performed confirmed this. But I was wrong. My heart had refused to accept the irreversible truth of his passing, just like it did when my father passed away. I take our wonderful chat on that morning as his "taggtoo" (his farewell), as some special souls are believed to do in the Wolof culture he studied so well. He "has completed his work well" ("wàcc na liggéey"). May the rewards awaiting him in paradise surpass his expectations, as the Mourides whose stories he told so eloquently in his last book would gratefully pray.
Fallou Ngom
My first memory of Jim Searing dates from January of 1995. I had just been offered a job at UIC, and he was serving as Associate Chair. When the phonecall came from him about my course schedule for the following year I was athome with my parents for a few weeks, preparing for my dissertation defense, interviewing, and watching my father's health decline. It was sequencing that most challenged my father's brain, but he really wanted to be helpful as I Xeroxed and collated the photographs for the dissertation's appendix. It was work to stay two steps ahead of him so we would not end up with chaos. "You sound a bit stressed" I heard Jim's voice say on the other end of the line "maybe we should talk about this another time." It was only later that I learned that one of Jim's hidden talents was to talk both troubled students and anxious colleagues down off the ledge, even while challenging them to stretch and grow into their fullest potential. "You sound stressed" was not a judgment, but an observation.
In the last few months a certain lightness had crept into his being. There seemed to be a bit more bounce in his step, a bit more radiance in his smile. With the duties of Chair behind him he was focusing his departmental energies on areas closest to his heart. These included the Encounters Graduate Concentration and building collaborative relationships with other individuals and institutions in the study of African history. He was also a key figure in a recent multidisciplinary conference that UIC hosted on Slavery and its Aftermath in the Atlantic World which took place in conjunction with the opening of the exhibit on Commerce in Human Souls . . . still on display inSpecial Collections on the second floor. In this role he worked with younger scholars in the department, Corey Capers and Sunil Agnani, giving them freedom to set up their own panels, but also developing closer relationships with them and engaging in important dialogue. The contacts he made with Toyin Falola, who served as a keynote speaker for the event, have led to collaboration with UNESCO both in recognition of our library's collections on the history of the African slave trade and early abolitionist movements, and also for possibledepartmental participation in UNESCO's Decade for People of African Descent.
But the image that I want to leave you with is one that I received thisweek from his students when I met with his undergraduate classes, and spokewith his graduate advisees. It became clear at once that the news of their professor's death was not only a shock, but also a cause for deep grief. We have all had teachers and mentors along the way who have affected us profoundly, and I learned this week that for many Jim Searing was such a figure. He enlarged their worlds, stretched their minds, increased their knowledge, and showed them what it means to exercise both compassion and a sense of humor. "We learned so much," "He kept us on the edge of our seats for 2 hours and 50 minutes," "He was a father figure to me," were some of the comments that I have heard.
Before I end, permit me to share a short poem by Hafiz, a fourteenth-century Sufi poet, as a befitting tribute to the memory of our dear Jim:
DROPPING KEYS
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all
night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)
From The Gift, trans. Daniel Ladinsky
Jim dropped keys for his students all day long, giving them tools they will continue to use to enlarge their worlds, their minds, and their possibilities. We will miss him greatly.
----Laura Hostetler
Whether it be student, neighbor, family, or colleague, Searing's influence on others is clear. Beyond the academic foundations he leaves behind, Searing also leaves an astoundingly human element in his experiences with others. The sentiments of all who knew him reflect more than just his brilliance; they reflect his warm soul. Theyembody the Jim Searing that used his ability for insight to create a safe and welcoming space for all those around him. His passing is not just the loss of an accomplished academic and teacher. It is the loss of a kind and gentle human being. Given his capacity for education, it is certain that Searing'scompassion will also continue to live through the people he touched.
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