Faculty

Cécile Accilien is Associate Professor of  Haitian Studies and Director of the Institute of Haitian Studies in the Department of African and African-American Studies. Her primary areas of interest include Haitian Studies, Gender Studies and Film Studies. 

Shawn Leigh Alexander, who received his PhD from the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2004, is an Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and the director of the Langston Hughes Center at the University of Kansas. His area of research concentration is African American social and intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Anthony Bolden (Ph.D., Louisiana State University) is an Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies. His teaching and research interests include African-American music, African-American cultural studies, popular culture, African literature, and ethnic-American literature. He has published extensively on Funk and Blues. Dr. Bolden has previously taught at the University of Alabama, University of Iowa, and Dillard University.

Dr. Naima Boussofara, a graduate of the universities of Tunis, Exeter (UK), and Austin at Texas, is an associate professor of Arabic Studies. She received her Ph.D in applied linguistics but she also specializes in sociolinguistics. She teaches courses on Arabic language, Arab cultures and societies. She has had teaching experiences at Cornell College in Iowa, and at the universities of Tunis, and Texas at Austin.

Abel Chikanda (Ph.D., University of Western Ontario) is an Assistant Professor of African & African-American Studies and Geography.  His main research and teaching interests include migration and development, refugee movement, food security, and the informal sector in Africa. He has held teaching positions at several universities in Canada including Western University, Queen’s University and the University of Waterloo.

Jessica Gerschultz is an Assistant Professor of African and African-American Studies. She received her PhD in Art History from Emory University in 2012. Professor Gerschultz’s research and teaching interests span modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Middle East, the linkages between textiles, gender, and materiality, and the sociopolitical dynamics of artists’ networks. She has conducted comparative fieldwork in Tunisia, Senegal, Switzerland, Kenya, and Oman. 

Jennifer F. Hamer received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas-Austin. Her general area of study is the sociological and qualitative study of families, especially those within the United States. Within this broad field, her primary research interests are African American fathers, mothers, and families, especially those that are urban, low-income and working class.

Jelks is a graduate of South Shore High School (Chicago), the University of Michigan (BA in History), McCormick Theological Seminary (Masters of Divinity) and Michigan State University (Ph.D. in History); he is also an ordained clergy person in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Before joining the faculty of the University of Kansas, Professor Jelks taught at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Clarence Lang is an Professor of African and African-American Studies at The University of Kansas, and a former Langston Hughes Visiting Professor.  He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004. 

Liz MacGonagle is an African historian in the Departments of History and African & African American Studies. She is the Director of the Kansas African Studies Center (KASC). In her research, she crosses historical, geographical, and theoretical boundaries to link nation, culture, and ethnicity to processes of identity formation in African and Diasporan settings.

Peter Ojiambo is an Associate Professor of African & African-American Studies. His research focuses on African education, especially in studies on Starehe Boys Center and School of Kenya. He has published in this area and on education, democracy and development. His area of teaching is KiSwahili and he has developed a KiSwahili teaching website. Dr. Ojiambo has held teaching positions at Ohio University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Dorthy Lee Pennington, a graduate of Rust College and the University of Kansas, is an associate professor of African and African-American Studies, and Communication Studies. She is a specialist on intercultural communication and African-American culture, the cultural discourse on trauma/terror and has taught courses on the Rhetoric of African Americans, the Black Woman, Black Male and Female Communications, among others. She has had teaching experiences at Texas Tech University and at the Department of Defense where she taught courses on Race Relations and Equal Opportunity Management.

Dr. Peter Ukpokodu, a graduate of the Universities of Ibadan and Kansas, is a professor of African and African-American Studies, and a courtesy professor of Theatre and Film.