Professor Emeritus Patrick Bellegarde-Smith was awarded the Jean Price-Mars Medal for his work on issues of cultural and national identities, and for his scholarship on the Haitian religion of Vodou. He received the award in Port-au-Prince in November 2013. The Medal, established only this year, sheds light on scholarship in the realm of cultural studies. Bellegarde-Smith was participating at the 25th annual conference of the Haitian Studies Association, and also at a symposium on the History of Ethnology in Haiti. Earlier, he had presided over the 10th international colloquium of the Congress of Santa Barbara held in October at Harvard University, on the healing arts in Vodou. He was recently anthologized in a text on Caribbean Cultural Thought, edited by Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha, with a chapter, “The Spirit of the Thing: Religious Thought and Social/Historical Memory,” and published with Claudine Michel, in the Journal of Africana Religions, “Danbala and Ayida as Cosmic Prism: The Lwa as Trope for Understanding Metaphysics in Haitian Vodou and Beyond.”

The inaugural Fall 2013 issue of the newsletter The Africologist was launched on Wednesday, October 9th, 2013. The issue is dedicated to Prof. Winston Van Horne, who passed away on May 24th, 2013 after 35 years of dedicating his life to the Department, to the University, and to academia. Download a copy in PDF format.

Esteemed professor Dr. Winston Van Horne, founder of the discipline of Africology, passed away on May 24, 2013. The Africology Department welcomes friends and family to a memorial honoring esteemed professor Winston Van Horne to be held on Wednesday, Oct 10th, 2013. See more

Two of the 2014 Ronald E. McNair Scholars are Africology majors! Congratulations to Kitonga Alexander and Rachel A. Johnson.

Associate Professor of Africology, Jeffrey Sommers, has been made Senior Fellow at UWM’s Institute of World Affairs.

Africology’s own Dr. Joyce Kirk and Pauli Taylorboyd are featured in the November edition of UWM Report! The article is entitled, “Celebrating UWM’s role in helping bring democracy to South Africa” and can be found on page 8.