Expert on African languages, literature to speak October 28

A professor of African languages and literature will present an Oct. 28 program in the Colvard Union small auditorium.

Dr. Edris Makward of the University of Wisconsin-Madison will speak on "Myth and Ritual in African Literature" at 7 p.m. A reception will follow.

Makward

Makward's research documents the African experience on the continent and the forced dispersion to the Caribbean and America. He is a multilingual scholar fluent in French, English, Wolof, and Arabic.

His interests span the whole continent of Africa and involve study of such novelists and playwrights as Senegalese Sembene Ousmane, author of "God's Bits of Wood," "Tribal Scars and Other Stories," and more than a dozen other novels and short stories; Cheikh Hamidou Kane, author of "Ambiguous Adventure"; Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laabi; and South African Ezechial Mphalele.

His research involving the scattering of native Africans to other lands includes writers V.S. Naipaul and George Lamming, African-American writings on Black Muslims in America, as well as the works of the late Alex Haley, most famous for writing "Roots."

The international lecturer has taught at Wisconsin-Madison since 1972. He is a founding member and current president of the West African Research Association whose research center is located in Dakar, Senegal. He also serves as vice president of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers headquartered at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Makward earned a master's degree from the Sorbonne in Paris and a doctorate from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

The free, public program is co-sponsored by the Cobb Institute of Archaeology, Anthropology Club, Holmes Cultural Diversity Center, the departments of History, and Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, and the College of Arts and Sciences.

For more information, telephone the Cobb Institute at 325-3826.