Mbye Cham WARA President

Mbye Cham, Ph.D. is Chairman of the Department of African Studies at Howard University Graduate School in Washington, D. C. and Professor of Modern African Literature in English and French (West Africa and South Africa); African and Third World Cinema; Film and African Development.

Dr. Cham, originally from Gambia, West Africa attended the University of Dakar in Senegal and the University of Besancon in France before receiving his B.A. degree from Temple University in Philadelphia. He holds an M.A. degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Dr. Cham taught at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urban from 1978-1980 before beginning his work with Howard University in August 1980 as Assistant Professor in the Department of African Studies. His areas of research interest are; literary and film theory, language and style in fiction, literature (oral and written), film and society, art culture and development, and religion and the creative imagination. Currently, Dr. Cham is doing research in “Film and History in Africa” and “Cinema in Southern Africa” and is continuing work on a 90 minute documentary film on the Ghana young pioneers and Gambian youth who were part of this movement in 1961.

Dr. Cham has spoken at a number of lectures, seminars, juries, and conferences throughout the world. In addition to numerous essays and chapters in books on African and Caribbean literature and film, he is the editor of EX-ILES: Essays on Caribbean Cinema, and co-editor of Blackframes: Critical Perspectives on Black Independent Cinema and African Experiences of Cinema. From 1994 to 1997, he directed  a Rockefeller Foundation funded Humanities Residency Project on Culture and Development in Africa housed in the Department of African Studies at Howard University. In June 2001, he conducted a National Endowment for the Humanities curriculum workshop on Integrating Film Into the HBCU Curriculum and in 2005 another NEH Summer Institute on African Cinema for 25 US college and university teachers. Both events took place at the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar, Senegal. He was a lead scholar for the first African Film Summit held in Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa in April 2006. 

Dr. Cham has been or currently is a member and served on the committees of the African Literature Association, African Studies Association, Modern Languages Association, College Language Association, Black Renaissance Noire, The African Script Development Fund (Zimbabwe) and The African Cinema Centre (Cape Town, South Africa).

Jennifer Yanco, WARA U.S. Director

Dr. Yanco is a research fellow at the African Studies Center at Boston University, where she taught in the African language program for a number of years, focusing on curriculum development for Lingala, Hausa, and Setswana. She has served as interim African language coordinator at Boston University and has organized and taught intensive summer language programs in both Hausa and Setswana. Yanco spent many years in Niger, involved in various aspects of language education and served for two years as a Fulbright senior lecturer in Linguistics at the Université de Niamey. She holds a masters degree from the Harvard School of Public Health where she specialized in the social and political determinants of health. Her current work developing anti-racism curricula for schools and adult education programs stems from the conviction that, of all the determinants of health, racism continues to have the most devastating, widespread, and long-term effects, making it the most serious public health issue facing us. Dr. Yanco has a Ph.D. in Linguistics and African Studies from Indiana University.

Ousmane Sène, Director of WARC

Dr. Sène is an associate professor of Literature (African and African-American) in the Department of English, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal. He chaired the department from 1988 to 1998. He is an alumnus of Université Cheikh Anta Diop where he earned his B.A. and M.A. in English before going to Paris for a Ph.D. in Commonwealth Literatures at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Saint Cloud and Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III. He has been serving in the Department of English of Université Cheikh Anta Diop since his return from Paris in 1983. Sène is a frequent visitor to the United States, primarily for teaching and research purposes. He was a senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Florida in 1992-93. Before and subsequently he has served as visiting professor in several U.S. universities such as Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, Loyola Marymount University, Wofford and Converse Colleges, Beloit College, and more. Sène has substantial experience in the area of administration, first as chair of the Department of English in Dakar (3,500 students) and then as study abroad program administrator in Senegal for a number of U.S. universities. He is the author of several publications on issues relating to literature and the social sciences and is a regular contributor to Senegalese daily newspapers and radio and television programs. Sène has also worked as a free-lance translator for several international institutions, such as the Panafrican News Agency (Pana), U.N. representations in Dakar, USAID, and several other development-oriented NGO's. Prior to being appointed Director of the West African Research Center, Sène was the President of AROA (Association de Recherche Ouest Africaine).

Wendy Wilson Fall, WARA Secretary

Wendy Wilson Fall is an Associate Professor in Pan African Studies and Adjunct in Anthropology at Kent State University . Before moving to Kent , Ohio , Dr. Wilson-Fall was Director of the West African Research Center, where she served for five years. Wilson-Fall has her PhD from Howard University 's African Studies Center (1984), where her concentration was in Social Anthropology. She received her Masters from Amadu Bello University in Zaria , Nigeria . Dr. Wilson has published articles on Fulani pastoralists and herding ( Journal of African Philosophy, Nomadic Peoples ), as well as papers and monographs on various rural development issues ( Series on Senegal , Drylands Research Institute, U.K. , and in Zartman. Johns Hopkins University . SAIS . 1999, and Diop. Karthala, Paris. 2002). Dr. Wilson is a participant in the UCLA based project “The Sahara Crossroads Initiative” which seeks to examine current paradigms on studies of Saharan socio-economic history and culture. Other recent work includes research on people of Afro-Malagasy descent in African diaspora communities in the Americas , particularly in urban and rural communities in eastern and central Virginia . Part of this project is a documentary film and book on family narratives of such African American families, who descend from slaves which arrived in the 18 th century and immigrants who came to Virginia in the mid 19 th century through Christian mission networks. Dr. Wilson is a recipient of the Chevalier de l'Ordre Nationale of the Republic of Niger , a fellowship from the Rockefeller Library at the Williamsburg Foundation ( Virginia , 2005), and selected scholar for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities ( Hanover , 2004).

Jemadari Kamara , WARA Treasurer

Jemadari Kamara is the co-director of the Center for African, Caribbean and Community Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB). The center is involved in educational, environmental, economic and community development projects in the Caribbean , West Africa and urban America . He also serves as a senior fellow in the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies and on the faculty of the Africana Studies Department at UMB which he chaired from 1996-2001. He first became involved with West Africa attending Fourah Bay College in 1969. Subsequently, he has continued to live and work throughout the region teaching on senior Fulbright assignments at the Universite Nationale du Benin (Cotonou 1985-1987) and most recently at Universite Gaston Berger (UGB - St. Louis, Senegal 2001-2002). During his tenure at UGB he co-directed a community development project establishing a community resource center in the St.Louis region. Also, he has served as the chairman of the Massachusetts delegation to the National Summit on Africa/Africa Society. Of particular interest has been his ongoing work using photovoltaic (solar) systems for rural electrification and economic development. Most recently, Kamara has co-directed a youth leadership development program in Senegal and Benin , YES (Youth Education and Sports) with Africa , which has over 1000 youth participants. Kamara came to UMB as dean of the College of Public and Community Service (1988-1993). Kamara's most recent publication includes contributions from throughout Africa and the Diaspora, The State of the Race–Creating Our 21 st Century (2004).