RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - KENNETH HARROW RECEIVED DISTINGUISHED AFRICANIST AWARD

Congratulations, Ken. It is well-deserved.

Maureen

 

Maureen N. Eke, PHD

Professor of English

AN 240

Central Michigan University

Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859

Direct: 989-774-1087

Main: 989-774-3171

Fax: 989-773-1271

Email: eke1mn@cmich.edu or Maureen.eke@cmich.edu

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Olabode Ibironke
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 12:13 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - KENNETH HARROW RECEIVED DISTINGUISHED AFRICANIST AWARD

 

A most deserved honor! Thanks for what you do, Ken, and Congratulations!

Bode Ibironke

Rutgers U.

On 4/1/12 7:09 PM, Ayo Obe wrote:

Ken Harrow, Congratulations!

Ayo

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama

On 2 Apr 2012, at 00:01, Pablo Idahosa <pidahosa@yorku.ca> wrote:

Hearty Congrats Ken. Wabiwanna.

All the best,
Pablo


On 01/04/12 6:32 PM, Toyin Falola wrote:

 DISTINGUISHED AFRICANIST AWARD, 2012

Dr Kenneth is the 2012 recipient of the Distinguished Africanist Award at the Africa Annual Conference, University of Texas at Austin. This is an  award dedicated to life time service and enormous contributions to the discipline in academic and practical manners.

        Kenneth Harrow is Distinguished Professor of English at Michigan State University. He received a BS from M.I.T., an MA in English from NYU, and a PhD in Comparative Literature, also from NYU. His dissertation was a comparative study of the works of Albert Camus (French philosopher and author), Ignazio Silone (Italian author and politician), and Arthur Miller (American playwright). Dr. Harrow's current work focuses on African cinema and literature and Diaspora and Postcolonial Studies.
       Dr. Harrow began his career at Michigan State, where he served as a lecturer for three years before being hired in 1970 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities. As a young scholar, he received the Younger Humanist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which enabled him to travel to France and North Africa to investigate the relationship between the work of Albert Camus and the Francophone literature of the Maghreb.
    In these early years, Dr. Harrow also wrote plays and short stories. His one-act play Death to the Brother was produced at the Omni Theatre Club in New York City in 1972. Another play, In for Life, won the Boarshead Theatre Competition in Lansing, Michigan, in 1977. Boarshead is a professional theatre company "nationally acclaimed for producing new plays and its top-quality productions."
  Dr. Harrow was awarded the first of his three Fulbright grants in 1977. He taught as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Yaounde, Cameroon, from 1977 to 1979.
      Dr. Harrow returned to Africa for a year in 1982 as a Senior Fulbright Researcher in Dakar, Senegal, where he also guest-lectured at the University of Dakar and the University of Ouagadougou, Upper Volta, Burkina Faso.
      In 1986 Dr. Harrow co-convened the African Literature Association conference held at Michigan State. The theme that year was "Critical Theory and Political Commitment," and the conference featured notable speakers from different parts of the world. Dr. Harrow helped secure additional funding to support the conference, in the form of two grants from the Michigan Council for the Humanities and one from the Michigan Council for the Arts.
  In addition to serving two, three-year terms on the Executive Council of the African Literature Association, Dr. Harrow also served as the association's Vice President in 1987-8 and as President in 1988-9.
   In 1989, after teaching for 19 years as a professor in the Department of Humanities and undertaking a year-long joint appointment with the Humanities and English departments, Dr. Harrow was appointed Professor in the Department of English, where today he is Distinguished Professor of English. During that same year he also returned to Senegal and spent time teaching at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (formerly University of Dakar), in conjunction with an MSU-Université Cheikh Anta Diop linkage grant sponsored by what was then called the United States Information Agency, or USIA.
        In 1994, Dr. Harrow published his first book, Thresholds of Change in African Literature. Three years later, in 1997, Dr. Harrow again convened a major African Studies conference, this time under the auspices of the African Literature Association Conference, held at Michigan State University. The theme was African cinema, and the conference featured a dozen African filmmakers.
     Dr. Harrow's second book, Less Than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Women's Writing, was published in 2002, toward the end of his two-year tenure as Director of the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature.
  Dr. Harrow's third and most recent Fulbright enabled him to serve as Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal from 2005 to 2006. While in Dakar, he organized an African and African American Film Series in February 2006 and again that summer. A year later, his third book, Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism, was published by Indiana University Press. His latest work Trash! A Study of African Cinema Viewed from Below, will be published by Indiana University Press in 2012.

        In addition to his four books, Dr. Harrow has edited numerous collections on such topics as Islam and African literature, African cinema, and women in African literature and cinema, including special issues of Research in African Literatures and Women in African Cinema. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Maghrebi Studies, Research in African Literatures, Critical Arts, The Global South, and Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, and served as Associate Editor of Research in African Literatures from 1992-1993. 
  Dr. Harrow has published more than 50 articles on topics ranging from African film, African literature, the situation of women in the Maghreb, and a dozen chapters. He has contributed several entries on African cinema, African literature, and Islam to dictionaries and encyclopedias, and is the Associate Editor of The Encyclopedia of African Literature. One especially notable project was his co-coordination (with Marjorie Winters) of a "project to review and supplement the entire holdings on African writers in the macropedia of the Encyclopedia Britannica."
      Dr. Harrow plays an active role in the university community at Michigan State, and has served on many committees over the years. He has also made a significant contribution to his larger community, both locally and worldwide, by serving as a reviewer of African literature for the PMLA, World Literature Today, and Africana Journal, as well as for granting agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation. In addition, he is a member of Amnesty International's US Coordinating Committee for Central Africa, working as the country coordinator for Burundi, Rwanda, and the support coordinator for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
   Dr. Harrow has been awarded several research grants from Michigan State over the years, and he has also been honored with the Distinguished Member Award. The African Literature Association honored him with their first Distinguished Member Award.

 

-- 

Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
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