The Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies is proud to announce its new Ford Dorsey Director of the Center for African Studies, Sean Hanretta. With a keen interest in the history of the African continent, he brings to the position a variety of experiences that will prove beneficial to the Center and Division.
Hanretta received his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. He then returned to his undergraduate alma mater, Colorado College, to teach followed by a short stint at Dartmouth College. He joined the Stanford history department in 2004. Inspired by his first research trip to West Africa nearly twenty years ago, his current work focuses on the intellectual, cultural and religious history of that region. He has, however, also written about topics as diverse as pre-colonial Zulu gender relations and the layout of mining camps in the Belgian Congo.
Published in a variety of journals including Comparative Studies in Society and History and the Journal of African History, Hanretta has also authored Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory Community, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. In preparation for a new book, Developing Love and Death: Ghanaian Muslim Weddings and Funerals in an Era of Reform, his current research looks into the changes in Islamic rituals and what it meant to be Muslim in twentieth-century Ghana. He is also carrying out research on the history of higher education in West Africa and on the origins of the idea of African culture.
A past recipient of Mellon, Fulbright, and Social Science Research Council fellowships, Hanretta serves as co-editor of the journal Ghana Studies and serves on the boards of several others.
As director of the Center, Hanretta hopes to continue the tradition of leadership excellence established over the last several decades and to help faculty meet the increasing demand for courses on Africa from Stanford undergraduates and graduate students alike. He will also be leading a Bing Overseas Studies Program summer seminar in Ghana in August and September of 2014.
The Center for African Studies coordinates an interdisciplinary program in African Studies for undergraduate and graduate students. Contact africanstudies [at] stanford.edu (africanstudies[at]stanford[dot]edu) for more information.