1911 Campus Map in sepia tones
Building an Education in the Humanities in Southeast Ohio

Expanding humanistic education: African Studies Program and the Ohio University Press

New Humanities Programs Arise: African Studies

Founded in the 1960s in an era of decolonization in Africa, the African Studies program (opens in a new window) at Ohio University is nationally renowned for its academic excellence and for its importance as a hub of scholarly research. The program rose to prominence under Director Steve Howard’s (opens in a new window) leadership, 1991-2016. A four-time Fulbright winner with a Ph.D. in Sociology from Michigan State and research that focuses on social change in Africa and the Muslim world, Howard transformed a program of nine faculty members into a program of 60. Through his efforts, the university was designated a National Resource Center for African Language and Area Studies, a prestigious status bestowed on just 10 institutions nationwide. With this designation, Howard managed to raise $24 million for the university, raising the profile of both the African Studies program and the African Studies List at the Ohio University Press. Howard also notably founded the Institute for the African Child (1999-2015), a five-college partnership that stimulated curricular developments and research in this area.

Steve Howard (drawing by Kenyan artist, Peter Muguna)
Steve Howard (drawing by Kenyan artist, Peter Muguna)

A Program with Global Connections and Impact

The African Studies program has built an international reputation by actively recruiting and training students from diverse African nations in various academic and professional fields—notably public health, history, political science, the arts, and education. The relationship is reciprocal: Ohio faculty and students have traveled to and worked in a variety of African nations, pursuing research and educational development projects in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, South Africa, Gambia, and Tanzania.

Ohio University’s Alden Library reflects and enables these research interests with its extensive Africana holdings, including indigenous language texts; the university is the North American Depository for documents from Botswana and Swaziland. The program’s prominence is reflected as well in its role hosting international conferences and meetings, such as the Summer Cooperative African Language Institute (2003-2005): an eight-week institute offering instruction in 20 African languages to 100 students from across the United States, with fellowships supported by National Resource Center funds. In 2007, the African Studies program collaborated with Ohio University’s English Department to feature a group of African writers in the annual Spring Literary Festival: Zimbabwean poet Chenjerai Hove, Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor, and Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi. The program also hosted the African Literature Association Conference in 2011. 

3 book covers from the African Studies list

Ohio University Press: Global Leader in African Studies

The Athens campus is also home to Ohio University Press (opens in a new window), a global leader in African Studies, publishing African writing and books on African history, religion, politics, and more. In the 1960s, President Vernon Alden and others founded the press to increase the university’s national prominence and support scholarly research in the region. While the Center for International Studies (opens in a new window) started publishing monographs in the Africa Studies series in the 1960s, by 1983 Ohio University Press had positioned itself to focus on the field of African Studies as a significant part of its program. 

Former Ohio University Press Director (2013-2019) and South African native Gillian Berchowitz played a key role in this expansion. Even before she joined Ohio University Press in 1988, she joined forces with then acquisitions editor Holly Panich to initiate a partnership with Ravan Press of Johannesburg which was instrumental in helping Ravan circumvent censorship and stay afloat financially. Berchowitz strengthened another co-publishing relationship with James Currey Publishers in Oxford, England, as well as with African publishers in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda to make works of cutting-edge scholarship, authored by scholars on three continents, available in Africa and around the world.

Along with strong series in the field, Ohio University Press developed focused and energetic national and international marketing and distribution of press titles; 75-80% of all the books published by the press that are adopted for use in college classrooms come from the African Studies list.

African Studies Director Ghirmai Negash named PEN Eritrea's 2021 Freedom of Expression Award Winner
African Studies Director Ghirmai Negash named PEN Eritrea's 2021 Freedom of Expression Award Winner

The African Studies list

The African Studies list is now composed of nine separate series, geared toward audiences ranging from scholars to the general reader. A selection of these include:

  • The Africa in World History (opens in a new window) series, designed to be accessible to readers and undergraduates with little knowledge of Africa and to counter the egregious stereotyping prevalent among non-Africanist teachers of World History.
  • The New African Histories (opens in a new window) series, which has redefined the field of African history by publishing books by a new generation of Africanists that bring the practice of history to unlikely places, ask unsettling questions, and adopt unorthodox methodologies. 
  • The Ohio Short Histories of Africa (opens in a new window), co-published with South African publisher, Jacana, is a series of authoritative concise guides and biographies, succinct but powerful introductions to key figures and topics in African history that provide basic literacy to a world starved of accessible up-to-date information about the continent.
  • The Modern African Writing (opens in a new window) series features original works of contemporary fiction, memoirs, and other literary writing, including Gebreyesus Hailu’s novel, The Conscript (opens in a new window), translated from Tigrinya into English by Ghirmai Negash. 

See the entire African Studies list (opens in a new window)