African Material Culture

CONTRIBUTORS

COHrrRIBurrORS CHII(E C. ANIAI(OR obtained his doctorate degree in art history from Indiana University, Bloomington. He has been the Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His research interests include vernacular architecture, aesthetics, and symbolism. MARY JO ARNOLDI is an art historian and Curator for African Ethnology and Art in the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution where she works extensively with museum collections. She has carried out research on art and performance in Mali since 1978. Her recent publications include Playing with Time: Art and Performance in Central Mali and Crowning Achievements: African Arts of Dressing the Head. HENRY J. DREWAL, currently Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has published extensively on the arts and material culture of Africa and the African Diaspora. He is currently preparing an exhibition and book on Mami Wata arts in Africa and the Americas. CHRISTRAUD GEARY is a cultural anthropologist and Curator of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. She has carried out research in Cameroon and has published extensively on history and material culture in the Cameroon Grassfields and, more recently, on the history of photography in Africa. A recent publication is The Voyage of I(ing Njoya's GIft: A Beaded Sculpture from the Bamun I(ingdom, Cameroon, in the National Museum of African Art (1994). I(RIS L. HARDIN is an anthropologist who has done research in the I(ono area of Sierra Leone since 1982 on aesthetics, change, and the introduction of a market economy. She has held research fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution and the School of American Research (Santa Fe). Her publications include The Aesthetics of Action: Change and Continuity in a West African Town and numerous articles. She is currently a Research Associate with the Smithsonian Institution. MARGARET JEAN HAY is Associate Professor of History and publications editor at the African Studies Center, Boston University. Her princi- Contributors 357 pal interests include rural, social, and economic history and the changing roles of African women. Her publications include African Women South of the Sahara, rev. ed. (1995, with Sharon Stichter), African Women and the Law: Historical Perspectives (1982, with Marcia Wright), and the Africa section of The American Historical Association Guide to Historical Literature (1995, with Joseph C. Miller). In addition, she is the editor (with Allen Isaacman) of the Heinemann Social History of Africa Series. BOGUMIL JEWSIEWICI(I is Professor of History and senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Languages, Arts, and Popular Traditions (Celat) at the Universite Laval, where he has been teaching since 1977. From 1968 to 1976 he taught at ZaIrian universities. His research concerns contemporary ZaIrian history with an emphasis on popular culture . He has published and edited numerous works on the popular arts of ZaIre, recently L'art pictural du Zai"re (Septentrion, Quebec 1992) and Vivre et mourir au Zai"re (I(arthala, Paris 1993). I(ANIMBA MISAGO is an archaeologist and has done extensive research on ceramic traditions and has published widely on archaeological and ethnographic material culture from central ZaYre. He is currently the Director of Research at the Institut des Musees Nationaux du ZaIre, I(inshasa . ANEESA I(ASSAM is a I(enyan born anthropologist and has been working among the Gabra aroma nomadic pastoralists of Northern I(enya since 1980. She completed her doctoral dissertation on Oromo folklore and oral traditions at the University af Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle) in 1984. She has written a number of papers on the indigenous system of knowledge of the Oromo, many of which were co-authored with Gemetchu Megerssa. She is currently a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Durham in England. I(AZADI NTOLE is a linguist currently working at the Agence de Cooperation en Culturelle et Technique, Paris. He has published numerous articles on language and on the links between language and material culture in ZaIre and continues to carry out linguistic research in ZaYre. GEMETCHU MEGERSSA is Oromo by birth and has been recording the oral traditions of his own people in Ethiopia and I(enya for more than a decade. He has collaborated with a number of anthropologists in their study of the Oromo culture. He completed his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1993 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, where he is currently preparing for...