11/10/2010
Professor Mahir Şaul of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will be giving the first FASS History Seminar of the 2010-2011 academic year on Tuesday, 12th October. The talk has been scheduled for 15:40 in Room G049 in the Arts and Social Sciences building.
After finishing his BA at Robert College/Boğaziçi University in 1975, Mahir Şaul went on to do an Anthropology PhD at Indiana University (1982), where he turned from an initial interest in the Middle East to a focus on West Africa, starting with Burkina Faso (which was Upper Volta at the time). His book (with Patrick Royer) on West African Challenge to Empire, offering a close reading of an anti-colonial revolt in the Volta-Bani region, won the Royal Anthropological Association's Amaury Talbot Prize in 2002. He also received the Association for African Anthropology's Distinguished Africanist Award in 2004. He is currently conducting a special research project in Istanbul.
Prof. Şaul will be speaking on "West Africa's historical connections with the Mediterranean, Islam, and the Ottoman world : A personal journey." The lecture will be followed by questions and discussion.