Professor Fallou Ngom Awarded Herskovits Prize
Congratulations to Professor Fallou Ngom on being awarded the prestigious Melville J. Herskovits Prize! The Herskovits Prize is given to the most important scholarly work in African Studies published in English each year, and was awarded to Professor Ngom for his book, Muslims Beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of Ajami and the Muridiyya (Oxford University Press). The book demonstrates how ‘Ajami materials serve as essential resources of indigenous religious, socio-cultural, and historical knowledge necessary for understanding the spread of Islam and its many adaptations in sub-Saharan Africa and the Muslim world at large, and explores the role that ‘Ajami materials played in the rise of the Muridiyya as one of the most resilient, dynamic, and influential Sufi movements in sub-Saharan Africa. Ngom is a professor of Anthropology, director of the African Studies Center at BU, and one of the members of the Center’s executive committee.