The MANSA Lisbon Conference

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

8:00-9:15  (Sala B.201)
Registration

9:30-10:30 (Auditorio B 2.03)
Opening Session
Kassim Koné, MANSA Vice-President
Professor Luis Reto, President of the Board of Directors of ISCTE
Eduardo Costa Dias, Professor, ISCTE & Lisbon Conference Co-Organizer
David Conrad, MANSA President

10:45-11:45  (Auditorio)
Pots and Pieces: Constructing a pre-19th century art history in Mali
Chair: Kristina Van Dyke, The Menil Collection, Houston

Presenters:
Kristina Van Dyke
"Assembling and Organizing the Corpus of Malian terra cottas"
Marc Ghysels, Radiology, Brussels, Belgium
"Slicing Through Time: CT Scanning of Malian terra cottas"

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:40  (Auditorio)
Heritage Politics in a Globalized World, Part 1
Co-chairs: Alice Bellagamba, University of Milan-Bicocca
Ferdinand de Jong, University of East Anglia

Presenters:
Ferdinand de Jong, University of East Anglia
"The Jola Museum: Anthropology, Memory and Modernity in Senegal"
Mike Rowlands, University College, London
"Dogon on Display: Visualising Alternative Heritage Encounters"
Stephen Wooten, University of Oregon
"Ciwara as Mande Cultural Heritage?"
Maria Luisa Ciminelli, University Ca' Foscari, Venice
"Protection of Cultural Identities and Collateral Effects: Ethnomimesis and Ethnogenesis"

14:40-14:55 Coffee Break

15:00-16:20  (Sala)
Heritage Politics in a Globalized World, Part 2
Co-chairs: Alice Bellagamba, University of Milan-Bicocca
Ferdinand de Jong, University of East Anglia

Presenters:
Charlotte Joy, University College, London
"The Politics of World Heritage in Djenne: Local and Global Conceptions"
Alice Bellagamba, University of Milan-Bicocca
"The Silent Legacy of Slavery in Contemporary Gambia"
Fatoumata Keita, CFIB, Bamako, Mali
"Les facteurs de l'évolution politique feminine au Mali : Cas de la Commune III du District de Bamako (1992-2007)"

15:00-16:40  (Auditorio)
Global Collaborations in the Arts
Chair: Mary Jo Arnoldi, Smithsonian Institution

Presenters:
Trevor Marchand, SOAS, University of London
"Exporting Prototypes of the Imagination: Scholars, Djenné Masons and Architectural Representations"
Lucy Duran, SOAS, University of London
"The Ngoni Meets the Blues: Producing the Album Segu Blue"
Janet Goldner, Artist and Independent Scholar, New York City
"An Ongoing Dialogue About Art, Life and Building Bridges"
Susan Vogel, Columbia University
"Cultural Ventriloquism: Making Films with the Musée National du Mali"

16:45-18:45  (Auditorio)
Grassroots Civil Society in the Mande World
Co-Chairs: Esther Kuhn and Lianne Holten, Leiden University

Part 1: Classic Mande Concepts Today

Presenters:
Nicholas Hopkins, American University of Cairo
"Malian Culture and Development Since Independence"
Paolo Gaibazzi, University of Milano-Biccoca
"Associations and Transnational Migration among the Soninke Communities of the Upper River Gambia"
Sten Hagberg, Uppsala University
"Ritual, Power and Recognition: Masaya, golotigiya and the Association de développement Tiefo Amoro in Burkina Faso"
Mike McGovern, Yale University
"Why Do They Hate Us?: Northern Mande Exclusion in Guinea, Liberia and Cte d'Ivoire, and the Resurgence of Notions of Empire"
Esther Kuhn, Leiden University
"Women Constructing the tonw of the 21st Centuryl"

18:45-20:00 (hall in front of auditorio)
Porto d'honneur (Welcoming reception)

Wednesday, June 25th

8:30-10:10  (Sala)
Grassroots Civil Society in the Mande World
Co-Chairs: Esther Kuhn and Lianne Holten, Leiden University

Part 2: Grassroot Responses to Social Change

Presenters:
Anita Schroven, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
"Civil Society in Guinea: Notions of Civil in a Changing Political Environment"
Mohamed Saîdou N'daou, Chicago State University
"Dress, Social Change, and the Social Re/Construction of Identity in Guinea from the 19TH Century to the Present" (see 27 June schedule for actual presentation time)
Lianne Holten, Leiden University
"A Maternal Health Care Initiative in the Monts Manding: Challenges for Civil Society"
Knut Graw, Catholic University of Leuven
"Technologies of Hope: Ritual Praxis and the Making of Social Temporalities in Senegal and Gambia"
Wouter van Beek, Leiden University and Tilburg University
"The Dogon Ethnic Association, a New Form of Civil Organization"

8:30-10:10  (Auditorio)
Trade, Traders and Cross-Cultural Relationships in Greater Senegambia: From the Historical Background to the Dynamics of the Present, Part 1
Co-chairs: Peter Mark, Wesleyan University
José da Silva Horta, University of Lisbon

Presenters:
Peter Mark and José da Silva Horta
"Sword trade in 17th century Senegambia: Evidence of a Trans-regional Sephardic Network."
Philip Havik, Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical/IICT-Lisbon
"The Port of Geba: At the Crossroads of Afro-Atlantic Trade and Culture".
Allen M. Howard, Rutgers University
"The Integration of Mande and Non-Mande Kola Traders, 1850-1920: The Niger and  Senegambian Arcs and the Pivot in Northeastern Sierra Leone"
James A. Jones, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
"Whose Baggage is This?: Cultivating Commercial and Political Ties Along the Dakar-Bamako Railroad."

10:10-10:25 Coffee Break

10:30-11:50  (Auditorio)
Trade, Traders and Cross-Cultural Relationships in Greater Senegambia: From the Historical Background to the Dynamics of the Present, Part 2
Co-chairs: Peter Mark, Wesleyan University
José da Silva Horta, University of Lisbon

Presenters:
George W. Brooks, Indiana University
"The Battle of Kansala"
Eduardo Costa-Dias, ISCTE, Lisbon and Cornelia Giesing, Environnement et Développement du Tiers Monde, Dakar
"The Production and Transmission of Collective Memories in Senegambia: The Example of the Traders and Clerics of Kaabu"
Jordi Tomas, University of Barcelona
"Trade and Religion in a Joola Huluf Kingdom in the 20th Century"

10:30-11:50  (Sala)
Literacy Practices in the Mande Area
Part 2: Practicing Literacy in a Multilingual and Multiscriptual Setting
Chair: Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye

Presenters:
Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, Centre d'études africaines (EHESS-IRD)
"Writing and the Self: an Ethnographic Approach of Personal Notebooks Kept by Villagers Near Fana (Mali)"
Francesco Zappa, Università di Roma, La Sapienza
"Islamic Printing : A New Frontier of Written Bambara?"
Cécile Van den Avenne, ENS Lettres et Sciences Humaines, ICAR, Lyon
"Writing Bambara and Colonial Power: Early Manuals for Administration and Army"

11:50-12:50 Lunch

13:00-14:20  (Auditorio)
Literacy Practices in the Mande Area
Part 1: Authority Between Oral and Written
Chair: Anne Doquet

Presenters:
Anne Doquet, Centre d'études africaines (EHESS-IRD)
"The Anthropologist's Writings: Issues Around Form and Content"
Giuseppina Russo, Centre d'études africaines (EHESS-IRD)
"Traces of Origins: Narratives of Political Foundation in the Sikasso Region (southern Mali)"
Ralph Austen, University of Chicago
"Who Was Wangrin and Why Does it Matter?" (Austen_R.doc)

14:25-14:45 Coffee Break

14:45-17:05  (Auditorio}
Mande Landscapes of Power: Reconstructing Power-Rich Localities and Corridors Through Time
Chair: Roderick J. McIntosh, Yale University

Presenters:
Stephen Paul Bulman, Newman University College
"Rocks, Birds and Sumanguru: Koulikoro (Mali) as a Power-Rich Locality Through Time"
David Conrad, Mande Studies Association
"Chasing Spirits Through the Mande Landscape: Serendipitous Ethno-history in Guinea and Mali"
Jan Jansen, University of Leiden
"Solid as a Rock?: Origin and Autochthony in Mande Oral Traditions"
Kassim Kone, SUNY-Cortland
"Space and Place and the Construction of Mande Power, Identity and History"
Agnes Kedzierska Manzon, Independent Scholar
"Donsoya as a Religious System: Hunters' Habitus and its Changes"
Roderick J. McIntosh, Yale University
"Can We Write a Deep-Time Symbolic History from Landscape Anomalies?"

18:15-19:30
Visit to the Geographical Society of Lisbon/Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa (SGL)
Welcome by SGL President, Prof. Luis Aires-Barros
Guided tour by Curator, Dr. Manuela Cantinho: "Historical Senegambia in the collections of the Geographical Society," exhibition of maps and documents

Thursday, June 26

8:30-10:30  (Auditorio)
From "Center" to "Periphery" and Back Again? Powers, Marginalities and the Construction of the Frontier as Contingent States
Co-chairs: Clemens Zobel,  Universidade de Coimbra and Cristiana Panella, Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren

Presenters:
Riccardo Ciavolella, école des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales,
Paris/Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
«De l'espace de frontière aux bords de la citoyenneté: la marginalité des Peuls mauritaniens par rapport à l'état»
Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, National Gallery of Art & University of California at Los Angeles
"Fractured Unity: The Public Face of the donso ton in a 'Frontier'"
Laura Arntson, USAID, Nigeria
"Frontier, Place, and Liminality in the Sankaran and Neighboring Koranko Territory"
Cristiana Panella
"'Le regard lointain' chez soi. Enclavement, histoire sociale et politique de l'authenticité dans la représentation du Sankarani (Wasolon, Mali)"

Co-discussants:
Michael Rowlands, University College, London
Clemens Zobel, Universidade de Coimbra

10:30-10:45 Coffee Break

10:45-12:25  (Auditorio)
Une Famille, Un Toit: Changing Demographic and Kinship Patterns in Mande Urban Centers
Chair: Barbara Hoffman, Cleveland State University

Presenters:
Dolores Koenig, American University
"A Cultural Geography of Middle-Class Bamako: The Known and the Unknown"
Claudia Roth, University of Lucerne, Switzerland
"The Marriage Paradox of Youngsters in Bobo-Dioulasso"
Nienke Muurling, University of Amsterdam
"From Kela to Bamako, Kayes and Beyond: Mande Family Dynamics on the Intersection of Marriage and Migration"
Barbara Hoffman, Cleveland State University
"'Une' famille un toit?: Changing Notions of denbaya, somogow, and Settlement Patterns in Bamako"

10:45-12:45  (Sala)
Islamic Debate and Practice in Transboundary Contexts
Co-Chairs: Maria Grosz-Ngaté, Indiana University and Rosa De Jorio, University of North Florida

Presenters:
Rosa De Jorio
"A Muslim Modernity? Women, Islam, and the Challenges of a Malian Public Sphere"
Kathryn V. Boswell, Indiana University
"Identifiable Aliens: Burkinabé Muslim Migrants in Cte d'Ivoire on the Eve of the Ivoirian Conflict"
Maria Grosz-Ngaté
"Religious Practice and Ethnic Diversity in the Bu Kunta Branch of the Qadiriyya (Senegal)"
Tal Tamari, SNRC, Paris
«Nouvelles recherches sur l'enseignement islamique en Afrique occidental: Mali, Guinée, Gambie»
Barbara Frank, SUNY-Stony Brook
"Chance Encounters: Art, Islam and Cultural Practices in the Mande/Senufo Hinterlands"

12:45-13:45 Lunch

13:45-15:45  (Auditorio)
Local Histories of Independence in Mali
Chair: Emily Burrill, University of Kentucky

Presenters:
Emily Burrill
"«Il a dit qu'on fasse le mariage blanc»: Gendered and generational struggles over labor, marriage, and autonomy in Sikasso, 1938-1960"
Brandon County and Ryan Skinner, Columbia University
"Nyamakalaw and dabakalaw: Labor and the Meanings of Independence' in Mali's première région économique, 1953-1968"
Bruce Hall, Duke University
"Ghosts of Modibo Keita's Mali: The Politics of race' and Violence in Northern Mali and the Radicalization of Malian Nationalism, 1946-68"
Baz Lecocq, Ghent University
"«Ranger le Chevre et le Chou»: Desert Agriculture and the Post Colonial Mission Civilisatrice in Mali's Grand Nord"
Daouda Gary-Tounkara, L'Université de Paris, 7
"La politique étrangère de Modibo Keita"

15:45-16:00 Coffee Break

16:00-17:40  (Auditorio)
Mande Languages and Linguistics, Part 1
Chair: Valentin Vydrin, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia

Presenters:
Ibrahima Sory Conde, Librairie N'ko, Conakry
"Le N'Ko et l'éducation nationale en langue nationale en Guinée : Compte-rendu de lecture et d'observation"
Oumou Diaby-Kassamba, CNWS et Université de Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
"Dioula disease terms and problems of translation into French"
Gérard Dumestre, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, Paris
"La catégorisation des adverbes bambara"
Ingse Skattum, University of Oslo
"Le français parlé au Mali: quel apport du bambara? (lexique, syntaxe)"

18:30
Visit to the Ethnological Museum/Museu de Etnologia
Guided tour and musical performance (c. 45") by Guinea-Bissau musical group Manecas Costa, subject of the film Manecas Costa: Paraiso di Gumbe (see below, Films).

Friday June 27
8:30-10:30  (Sala)
Mande Languages and Linguistics, Part 2
Chair: Valentin Vydrin, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia

Presenters:
Maria Konoshenko, St. Petersburg State University, Russia
"Comparison of Tonal Systems of Two Kpelle Dialects in Guinea"
Elisabeth den Otter, Amsterdam Museum of Anthropology
"Bozo and Somono Fishermen: Language, Economics, Crafts and Culture"
Elena Perekhvalskaya, Institute of Linguistic Studies, St. Petersburg, Russia
"Spatial postpositions in the Mwan language"
Charles Riley, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University
"Corpus Development and Emerging Publication Activities in Vai"
Valentin Vydrin, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia
"Linguistic Evidence for the Establishment of the Proto-Mande Homeland"

8:30-10:50  (Auditorio)
The Relevance of Oral Tradition in Today's Educational Issues
Chair: Simon Toulou, University of Geneva
Part 1: Oral Tradition and Pedagogy

Presenters:
Simon Toulon
"Oral Tradition: What Type of Education Training for Mande Bards?"
Robert Launay, Northwestern University
"How (not) to Read the Qur'an: Contested Paradigms of Arabic Literacy"
Abdou Karim Tandjigora, Université de Poitiers
"La place du chant, des poèmes et des proverbes dans l'éducation et la formation soninké"
John W. Johnson, Indiana University
"Publishing a Successful Manuscript in the Oral Epics in Africa Series (Indiana University Press)"

10:50-11:05 Coffee Break

11:10-12:30  (Sala)
The Relevance of Oral Tradition in Today's Educational Issues
Chair: Simon Toulou, University of Geneva
Part II: Oral Tradition as Research and Educational Resource

Presenters:
Ousmane Traoré,  Université de Paris IV
"La tradition orale dans l'apport historique des Archives Nationales du Ministère de la Marine française: des enqu&ecirctes orales d'André Bre aux (1696-1720) aux Cahiers de Yoro Boli Dyao (1847-1919)"
Ariane Deluz, EHESS, Paris
"La Conqu&ecircte du pays guro (Cte d'Ivoire) relatée par le chanteur Bolia. "
Mahamadou Faganda Keita, : Chercheur indépendant, Mali
"Le Mariage des maninka de Sibi : alliance et antagonisme, Expressions des chants cérémoniels"

11:10-12:50  (Auditorio)
Panel: A Collaborative Inquiry into the Performance of the Baga D'mba
Chair: Frederick Lamp, Yale University

Presenters:
Frederick Lamp
"It's a New Generation of Octogenarians: Tradition and Transition in Baga Art and Performance"
Marie Yvonne Curtis, Yale University D'mba Project
"L'Esthétique du Masque D'mba et de sa performance"
Nick Hockin, Wesleyan University
"Voicing the D'mba : A Century of Music in Transformation"
David Conrad, Mande Studies Association
"D'mba as Matrix of Baga Womanhood: Gateways to the Spirit World"

12:50-13:50 Lunch

13:55-14:15 Late arrival presenter from June 25 Panel
Grassroots Civil Society in the Mande World
Chair: Esther Kuhn, Leiden University
Part 2: Grassroot Responses to Social Change
Mohamed Saîdou N'daou, Chicago State University
"Dress, Social Change, and the Social Re/Construction of Identity in Guinea from the 19TH Century to the Present"

14:15-15:35  (Auditorio)
The Mande Diaspora in the Atlantic Region
Chair: Walter Hawthorne, Michigan State University

Presenters:
David Wheat, Vanderbilt University
"Upper Guineans in the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640"
Maria João Soares and Maria Manuel Torrão, Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, Lisbon
"Mande In and Through the Cape Verde Islands"
Walter Hawthorne, Michigan State University
"Atlantic Syncretisms: Mande and Other Upper Guinean Cultural Practices in Africa and Amazonia, 1650-1830"

15:35-15:50 Coffee Break

15:50-17:20  (Auditorio)
The Mande Diaspora in Africa
Chair: Emily Osborn, University of Chicago

Presenters:
Hillary Jones, University of Maryland
"A Protestant village de liberté and the Reconstitution of a Bambara' Community in Saint Louis, Senegal (1879-1907)"
Assan Sarr, Michigan State University
"Mande Land Ownership on the Atlantic Rim: Senegal and Gambia"
Emily Osborn, University of Chicago
"Recycling Aluminum and Casting Cooking Pots: The Making of a West African Artisinal Diaspora, 1942-2005"

17:20-18:20  (Auditorio)
Closing Session
Kassim Koné, MANSA Vice-President
David Conrad, MANSA President

19:30
Boat cruise on the Tejo River
Films available for viewing during the conference
Manecas Costa: Paraiso di Gumbe.
Director: Cosima Spender. Released by BBC Late Junction, 2003. Filmed in Guinea Bissau and Lisbon, 2002. A film about the making of Manecas' Costa's CD (Paraiso di Gumbe, produced by Lucy Duran, the first album ever recorded in Bissau.)
Katako D'mba and Katako Rice:  Rough Cuts from Guinea
Director: Rebecca Wexler.  Work in progress for the Yale University Art Gallery, 2008.  Filmed in Guinea as part of a collaborative interdisciplinary study led by Frederick Lamp, of the D'mba masked dance of the Baga.  Examines the D'mba dance from a variety of perspectives, and analyzes the process of looking across cultures and disciplines.
F&ecircte de circoncision/f&ecircte des masques Bozo, Kirango (Mali)
Director: Elisabeth den Otter. Released by Samaké Records, 2005. Filmed in Kirango (Mali). A film about a Bozo circumcision ceremony, accompanied by a masquerade (video on DVD, 40 minutes)
Kurundilana, constructeurs de pirogues
Director: Elisabeth den Otter. Released by Samaké Records, 2006. Filmed in Kirango (Mali). A film about the making of a traditional boat by a Bozo family (video on DVD, 35 minutes)