Africa Today

Mary Jo Arnoldi is curator for African ethnology and arts in the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She received her PhD in Art History from Indiana University in 1983. She is the author of Playing with Time: Art and Performance in Central Mali (Indiana University Press, 1995) and co-editor and contributor to African Material Culture (Indiana University Press, 1996). She has published numerous articles on art and society in Mali and on historic museum collections of Congo material culture. She was the lead curator on the permanent exhibition African Voices which opened at the Smithsonian in 1999 and has also curated a number of temporary African exhibits.

Alice Bellagamba teaches African Studies, Political Anthropology and History of Africa at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Turin where the focus of her dissertation was on the production of history in a Gambian community of the early 1990s. Her research interests include memory, colonialism and local government. In 2004-2005 academic year, she was Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bayreuth, working on a project devoted to chieftaincy and governance in 20^th century Gambia.

Rosa De Jorio is associate professor of Anthropology at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. Her research focuses on gender, nationalism, democratization, and cultural politics. She has published articles and chapters on these topics and was guest editor of the special issue: Narratives of the Past/Sites of Memory: Constructing Social, Religious, and Political Identities in the Postcolony. Polar: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review (2003).

Sten Hagberg is associate professor of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University. His current research considers the politics of recognition and political culture in Burkina Faso. Recent publications include Between Peace and Justice: Dispute Settlement between Karaboro Farmers and Fulbe Agro-pastoralists in Burkina Faso (1998); Poverty in Burkina Faso (2001); and the co-edited Bonds and Boundaries in Northern Ghana and Southern Burkina Faso (2000).

Goerg Odile is a full professor at the University of Paris-7 Denis Diderot, prior to which she was teaching at the University of Strasbourg, France. [End Page 154] She teaches Contemporary African History and is a member of the SEDET/ CNRS (UMR 7135). She received her Ph.D. in History (1981) as well as her "Thèse d'Etat" (1996) from the University of Paris-7. She has published numerous articles on urban history, identity or gender perspective and two books: Commerce et colonisation en Guinée, 1850-1913, L'Harmattan, 1986; and Pouvoir colonial, municipalités et espaces urbains. Conakry et Freetown, des années 1880 à 1914, L'Harmattan, 1997. She has also co-edited several books, the more recent ones being: Fêtes urbaines en Afrique. Espaces, identités et pouvoirs, Karthala, 1999; Etre étranger et migrant en Afrique au XXèmes, with C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, I. Mandé and F. Rajaonah (eds), 2003; C. Chanson-Jabeur and Odile Goerg (eds) "Mama Africa". Hommage à Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, L'Harmattan, 2005. She is currently working on women and gender history in West African cities as well as on leisure, mainly cinema. [End Page 155]