L I S T O F C O N T R I B U T O R S (in alphabetical order) - I

'Wande Abimbgla Professor, African Languages and Literature, (former) Vice-Chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Nigel Barley Assistant Keeper, North and West African Collections, Museum of Man- kind, the British Museum, London, England

Sandra T. Barnes Professor of Anthropology, and Director of African Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Edna G. Bay Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University, Atlanta, GA

Gracia Clark Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Adesuwa C. Emovon Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Uni- versity of Benin, Nigeria

Thoko Ginindza (deceased September 1996) Consultant, Agency for International Development, Mbabane, Swaziland

Helen Henderson Head of Women in Development Section, and Associate Research An- thropologist, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Sabine Jell-Bahlsen Research affiliate of the Architectural Heritage Center at The University of Technology in Lae, Papua New Guinea; and special correspondent, African Profiles International Magazine

Flora E.S. Kaplan Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies, and Director of the Museum Studies Program, New York University

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Alexander Lopasic Lecturer, Sociology Department, University of Reading, England

Beverly B. Mack Associate Professor, Department of African and African American Studies, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

J. Lorand Matory Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, and Afro-American Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Flora Nwapa (deceased, October 1993) Author and novelist, Enugu, Nigeria

Jacob K. Olupona Professor, African American and African Studies, University of Cali- fornia, Davis, CA

John Picton Reader in African Art in the Department of Art and Archaeology, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, England

Beverly J. Stoeltje Associate Professor of Folklore; and member of faculty, African Studies Program, Women’s Studies Program, and the Research Center for Lin- guistics and Semiotics Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

‘Wande Abimbola was born in Oyo, Oyo State, Nigeria, into a family of well-known devotees of Yoruba religion. His father was the Asipade (Commander of the Ogun community) of Oyo and environs. His mother worships Sango. All the children of the Abimbqla family are initiated into the worship of Ogun as soon as they are born; and the abbreviated version of his name, ‘Wande (Ogbnwhdk), means “Ogun is here looking for me.” Many family members were also diviners, and Abimbvla took his first lessons in divination and chanting of ijali (poetry of Ogun) from his father and his uncle, the late A-wo-&nu- m(j-wo6-16hbn AdCyqmg (Adeyqmp whose teeth have collapsed but whose voice has not), one of the most famous ij&i artists of his time.

‘Wande Abimbqla apprenticed with various artists of I f i and ijil5 for the first twelve years of his life. His Ph.D. in Yoruba literature was granted by the University of Lagos (1971). In 1975 he founded the De- partment of African Languages and Literature at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University); and was its Chair and Professor until he retired in 1990. H e served also as Dean, Faculty of Arts (1977-

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1979); and he was Vice Chancellor (President) of the same university from 1982 to 1989. ‘Wande Abimbqla writes extensively on Yoruba re- eligion, literature, and thought both in Africa and the African diaspora. Among his best known works are: Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa (UNESCO, Paris, 1975), Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literacy Corpus (Oxford LJni- versity Press, Ibadan, 1976), and IJiu Divination Poetry (NOK Pub- lishers, New York, 1977); he edited Yoruba Oral Tradition. Poetry in Music, Dance, and Drama (Ile-If$, 1975), a reference work on Yoruba oral tradition. Abimbqla was consecrated as a babalswo (priest of If5) in 1971; in 1981 he was installed as Awi$$ Awo Ni AgbSyc? (spokesman of If5 priests of the world). ’Wande Abimbqla served as Special Advisor to the Governor of Oyo State in 1992; and was later Majority Leader of the Nigerian Senate from December 1992 to November 1993. He is presently (1996-97) a Fellow of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute, and a Lecturer, Department of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University.

Nioel Barley is Assistant Keeper, Museum of Mankind, the British Mu- seum, London, with special responsibility for North and West Africa. He was a lecturer of anthropology at University College, London (1974- 77); and has carried out extensive field work: the Cameroon 1977-80, Nigeria 1989, and Indonesia 1988, 1990, 1992. H e has published on ritual and material culture, including architecture and body decora- tion: Symbolic Structures of the Dou’ayos (Cambridge University Press, 1983); A Plague of Caterpillars: A Return to the African Bush (Penguin Books, 1986); Nduen Fubara: The Foreheads of the Dead (Smithsonian Press: Washington, 1988); The Innocent Anthropologist (Henry Holt and Co., 1992), Smashing Pots: Feats of Clay from Africa (British Museum Press, and Smithsonian Institution, 1994); and Dancing on the Grave: Encounters with Death (John Murray, 1995).

Sandra T. Barnes is Professor of Anthropology, and Director of African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and nu- merous publications have focused on African urbanism, religion, poli- tics, history and gender. She is the author of Patrons and Power: Creating a Political Community in Metropolitan Lagos (1986) which won the 1987 Amaury Talbot Prize; “Women, Property, and Power” in Beyond the Second Sex, P. R. Sanday and R. G. Goodenough (eds), (1990); “Political Ritual and the Public Sphere in Contemporary West Africa,’’ in The Politics of Cultural Performance, D. Parkin, L. Caplan, and H. Fisher (eds) (1996); and editor of Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New (1989), of which a revised and expanded version is in press (1997). She is currently preparing a study of cultural and social plural- ism in pre-colonial West Africa.

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Edna G. Bav is Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of the Lib- eral Arts at Emory University, and former Executive Director of the African Studies Association. A historian, trained at Boston University, she has carried out field work in the Republic of Benin intermittently since the early 1970s. She has written on art (ASEN: Iron Altars of the Fon People of Benin) and has edited two books on women in Africa (Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, with Nancy J. Hafkin, and Women and Work in Africa). She is currently completing a book-length study of the ruling elite of the kingdom of Dahomey called Wives of the Leopard: Gender Politics and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey.

Gracia Clark is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Indiana Uni- versity, Bloomington. She received her doctorate in social anthro- pology from the University of Cambridge in 1984, and her B.A. in History from Stanford University in 1974. Her book on Kumasi Central Market (Ghana), Onions Are My Husband: Survival and Accumula- tion by West African Market Women, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1994. For her most recent field research, she re- turned to Kumasi during 1994-5 to record life histories and economic ideas of Asante market women, with funding from a Fulbright Fellow- ship and the Social Science Research Council. She has also held con- sultancies with the International Labour Office, the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and USAID. Other major publications in- clude: “Local Global Interactions in Ghana’s Structural Adjustment,” in Economic Analysis Beyond the Local System, Peter Peregrine et al. (eds). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. SEA Monograph #l3, 1996; “Food Traders and Food Security in Ghana,” in The Political Economy of African Famine: The Class and Gender Basis of Hunger, R. E. Downs, D. 0. Kerner and S. P. Reyna (eds). London: Gordon and Breach, 1991; “Colleagues and Customers in Unstable Market Condi- tions in Kumasi, Ghana,” Ethnology, January 1991; and Traders us. the State, Gracia Clark (ed), Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988.

Adesuwa Callista Emovon (nee Akenzua) was born in Benin City into the royal family of Benin. She was educated at Queens College, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, B.S. Honors; the London School of Eco- nomics and Political Science, England; and LJniversity of Birmingham, England, M.S.S., Sociology. She has received numerous fellowships and grants: the Ford Foundation Fellowship (1968-69), Fulbright Schol- arship, John Hopkin’s University (1972), the Swedish International Re- search Grant for Overseas Scholars, University of Uppsala, Sweden (1974-75), etc. She publishes widely in a number of professional local

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(Nigerian) and international journals. Professor Emovon also held many public service offices in Nigeria and is a member of several col- lege and university Governing Councils and the Advisory Council of Women’s Commission, Edo State; and was Head, University of Benin Admissions Committee. She is currently Associate Professor, and (former) Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Univer- sity of Benin.

Thoko Ginindza was a consultant at the Agency for International Development, Mbabane, Swaziland. She received her Master’s in So- ciology at the University of California at Los Angeles; and returned to UCLA in 1979 to earn a Master’s Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthro- pology, at the International College, Los Angeles, California. Her in- terest in anthropology was nurtured by Dr. Hilda Kuper, an anthropol- ogist whose well known research among the Swazi began in the 1930s. Dr. Kuper actively supported Dr. Ginindza’s academic pursuits through- ou t her career as an anthropologist, teacher, author, and researcher in her native Swaziland. Dr. Ginindza worked for various national organizations including: the National Museum, the National Archives, Lobamba, the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Tourism; and as a teacher at many primary and secondary schools. She dedicated herself to studying the culture of the Swazi people. Her research on the oral transfer of history, traditional praise songs, and the dual monarchy system earned her recognition in the academic community as a leading authority on Swazi culture. Between 1986-96 she published works on the origins and meanings of clan names, recorded oral his- tories, and published various other books and papers in English and in the Swazi language, among them: Simbongo, Live Liyeng Cayelwa, Ngabe Lishoni, and Tibongo Temakbosi Neteti Ndlovukazi. She en- couraged primary school children to read in their native language. She was a member, National Trust Commission, and assisted the local En- vironmental Authority. Dr. Thoko Ginindza died in September 1996, in Swaziland.

Helen K. Henderson holds a Ph.D., Liniversity of California, Berke- ley. She is Head of the Women in Development Program, and Associate Research Anthropologist of the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthro- pology, University of Arizona, Tucson. An applied anthropologist, she has conducted research on gender issues in a number of countries: Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Chad, and served as project di- rector for several Women in Development Projects. Following her two- year doctoral research on women’s roles in religion in Onitsha, Nigeria

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in 1960-62, her interest in the topic of women and religion was con- tinued with Onitsha women and men in their diaspora, and in a 1992 research visit to Onitsha. Her publications include: Gender and Applied Development: Surveying the Field, with Ellen Hansen (Uni- versity of Arizona Press, 1995); “Doing Applied Research with Women Farmers in the Sahel,” in Soundings: Rapid and Reliable Research Methods for Practicing Anthropologists, J. Van Willigen and T. J. Finan. editors (NAPA Bulletin, 1991); “Traditional Onitsha Ibo Maternity Beliefs and Practices,” with R. N. Henderson, Anthropology of Human Birth, M. Kay editor, F.A. Davis Company, 1982); An Out- line of Traditional Onitsha Ibo Socialization, with R. N . Henderson (Ibadan University Press, 1966).

Sabine Iell-Bahlsen is a research affiliate of the Architectural Heritage Center of The University of Technology, in Lae, Papua New Guinea, currently researching the vernacular architecture of that country. She is also an independent documentary film producer and director of Ogbuide Films in New York City, serves on the editorial board of Dia- lectical Anthropology, and is a special correspondent for African Pro- files International Magazine. Dr. Jell-Bahlsen has received her M.A. in ethnology from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. She has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, has regularly spent many months in Nigeria, since 1978, lectured widely on African cinema, art and ritual, and was an active executive board member of the New York African Studies Asso- ciation. Her published articles and reviews appear in the journals, Research in African Literatures, Dialectical Anthropology, Interna- tional Journal for African Historical Studies, and Commission on Visual Anthropology Review, and in the anthologies Principles of Visual Anthropology (new and revised edition) edited by Paul Hock- ings, Emerging Perspectives on Flora Nwapa edited by Marie Umeh (forthcoming), Sisterhood, Feminisms, and Power edited by Obioma Nnarmeka (forthcoming), Yearbook 199.3 for Transcultural Medicine and Psychotherapy edited by Walter Andritzky (in German), and Ethnographic Filmmaking edited by Jack Rollwagen. Dr. Jell-Bahlsen has independently produced serveral ethnographic films in close col- laboration with local communities, a Nigerian film team and co- producers. Her films include Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria; Ere Nwata-The Small King; Owu: Chidi Joins the Okoroshi Secret Society; and Tubali: Hausa Architecture of Northern Nigeria.

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Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan is Professor of Anthropology and Mu- seum Studies, Director and founder of the Program in Museum Studies, New York University. A Fulbright associate professor at the University of Benin, Nigeria (1983-85), she taught anthropology, and researched queens and queen mothers of the royal court. She was privileged to enter the Oba’s harem. In 1991, Oba Erediauwa of Benin bestowed a unique honor, naming her Edouwaye (“You have come home to Benin”), an equivalent to a male chieftaincy title. Her publications focus on the royal arts and religion of the Edo (Benin) people of Ni- geria; and the political and cultural nexus of material culture and muse- ology. They include: Images of Power: Art of the Royal Court of Benin (New York University, 1981), Museums and the Making of “Our- selves: ” The Role of Objects in National Identity (Leicester University Press, London, 1994; 2nd edition 1996); and a new edition of a semi- nal structural analysis of art style, A Mexican Folk Pottery Tradition: Cognition and Style in Material Culture in the Valley of Puebla (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL, 1994; Instituto Nacional Indigenista, Mexico DF., 1981). Among recent articles are: “Iyoba, The Queen Mother of Benin: Images and Ambiguity in Gender and Sex Roles in Court Art” (Representation and the Politics of Difference, Special issue, Art History, 1993); “Images of the Queen Mother in Benin Court Art” (African Arts, 1993), “Fragile Legacy” (History in Africa, 1991), and “The Ideology and Beliefs of Sacred Kingship Among the Edo (Benin) People, Nigeria” (African Spiri- tuality, J. K. Olupona, editor, Crossroads Press, New York, 1997-in press). A book on royal women, In Splendor and Seclusion: Women and Art at the Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria, is forthcoming.

Alexander Lopasic was for many years Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Reading, England (now retired). He was a (former) curator of the Nigerian Museum, Lagos in the 1950s. He has authored various works on African art, religion and political systems including: Commissaire-General D. Lemzan: A Contribution to the History of Central Africa, Teruuren (Belgium, 1971), and (editor) Medi- terranean Societies: Tradition and Change (Zagreb, 1994). He was an organizer of the Twelfth World Congress of Anthropological and Ethno- logical Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia in 1988. He has done extensive field work in Nigeria, the East-African coast, and in Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Malta, and Susak (Croatian Litoral).

Beverlv B. Mack is Associate Professor, Department of African and African American Studies, at the University of Kansas, where she teaches courses in Hausa language and culture, women in Islam, and

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African literature. During three years of field work in Kano, Nigeria, she worked with Hausa Muslim women poets, performers, and edu- cators, as well as having extensive research contact with women of the royal court in Kano. She has published widely on Hausa women and culture. Her books include ffausa Women in the Twentieth Century (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), The Collected Works of Nana Asma’u 2793-1864 (Michigan State University Press, 1996), and One Woman’s Jihad (Indiana University Press, forthcoming). She is also working on books about Hausa women’s poetry, The Popular Song, and Hausa women in the royal palace.

J. Lorand Matorv is Hugh K. Foster Associate Professor of Anthro- pology and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1991. His interests include African and Afro-Latin religions, especially Yoruba re- ligion in Nigeria, and its Benin, Brazilian, Haitian, and Cuban dias- pora; Afro-Latin and Afro-American religions in the United States; the- ories of syncretism; gender, race and politics in West Africa, Latin America, and among other immigrants and Americans of African de- scent who have not always considered themselves black, like mulattoes, Louisiana Creoles, Ramapo Mountain people, and Lumbee Indians. Pro- fessor Matory has written a book on women and male transvestites, Sex and the Empire That is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1994). A new book, Candomblc?, or What is African about the Most African Religion in the Americas, is forthcoming. Among his numerous articles, reviews, encyclopedia entries and con- ference papers of particular interest is, “Rival Empires: Islam and the Religions of Spirit Possession among the Oyo Yoruba” (American Ethnologist, 1994). Matory was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton LJni- versity; and he has held numerous fellowships, including a Fulbright- Hays fellowship, a Social Science Research Council grant for field re- search, and a Fellowship for University Teachers from the National Endowment for the Humanities. H e is on the advisory board of GLO, a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and associate editor of American Ethnologist.

Flora Nwanzuruahu NwaDa is Nigeria’s first woman novelist, born in Ogwuta, Imo state. She is the author of the highly praised Efuru (Heinemann, London, 1996), Idu (Heinemann, London, 1970), and the novels, One Is Enough (Tana Press, Enugu, 1981), Women are DiJ- ferent (Tana Press, Enugu, 19Sl), and Never Again (Nwamife, Ifejika, Enugu, 1975; Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 1992); also the widely

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read, This is Lagos and Other Stories (Nwankwo, Ifejika, Enugu, 1771), and Wives at War and Other Stories (Tana Press, 1980; Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 1992). After graduating from the IJniversity of Ibadan, she received a Diploma in Education, the University of Edin- burgh, Scotland. She was Woman Education Officer, Ministry of Edu- cation, and a teacher, before becoming an administrator, an Assistant Registrar at the University of Lagos. In the mid 1970’s she founded Tana Press Ltd. and published children’s books under a company label, Flora Nwapa Books. She served on several commissions, held a variety of government administrative and political appointments; she con- tinued to teach, but increasingly devoted herself to writing. In 1985 she received the University of Ife Merit Award in Authorship and Pub- lishing. In the 1990s several of her novels were published in the United States by Africa World Press. Flora Nwapa was scheduled to teach cre- ative writing at East Carolina University, North Carolina, in 1973, when she died after short illness in Nigeria. Her last novel, The Lake Goddess, is unpublished.

Jacob K. Olupona is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis. He is a specialist in com- parative religion and African religion. His works include: Kingship, Re- ligion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community (Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm. 1991); Religious Plurality in Africa: Essays in Honor of John Mbili (co-edited with Sulayman Nyang; Mouton 1993); African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society (editor; International Religious Foundation: Distributed by Paragon House 1991), Religion and Peace in Multi-Ethnic Nigeria (editor; Obafemi Awolowo Univer- sity Press, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 1992); and African Spirituality (editor), (Crossroads Press, New York, 1997-in press). Olupona has held sev- eral fellowships, including a Commonwealth Universities Academic Fellowship (England), a Senior Fellowship, Harvard University Center for the Study of Religions, a Copeland Visiting Fellowship, Amherst, MA, and a Fulbright Visiting Professorship at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA. He is the President of the African Association for the Study of Religions, and the chair of the American Academy of Re- ligion’s Committee on International Connections.

John Picton is Reader in African Art, Department of Art and Archaeol- ogy, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Pre- viously he worked in the British Museum, 1961 and 1970-79; and in Nigeria, the Department of Antiquities (now the National Commis- sion for Museums and Monuments) of the Federal Government of Nigeria, 1961-1970. His research interests include Ebira masquerade,

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and the inter-relationships between Ebira, Akoko-Edo and other peoples of the Niger-Benue confluence region of Nigeria, particularly as manifested in their visual arts; also Yoruba and Benin sculpture, tex- tile history in West Africa, and 20th century and post-Independence developments in the visual arts in Africa. His publications include: “Some Ebira Reflexions on the Energies of Women,” African Lun- guagesand Cultures, 1:1 (1988); “On Artifact and Identity at the Niger- Benue Confluence,” African Arts, 14:3 (1991); and “Sculptors of Opin,” African Arts, 27:3 (1994). He is also the author of two books including, African Textiles (with John Mack) 2nd edition (British Mu- seum Press, 1989); and most recent, The Art of African Textiles: Tech- noZogy, Tradition, and Lurex (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1995).

Beverlev 1. Stoeltie is an Associate Professor of Folklore, Indiana Uni- versity; and on the faculty of the African Studies Program, Women’s Studies Program, and the Research Center for Linguistics and Semi- otics Studies. As a Fulbright Research Scholar, Stoeltje spent a year (1989-90) in Kumasi, Ghana, where she researched power and au- thority of Asante queen mothers. She was director of a USIA linkage between the University of Ghana and Indiana University on perfor- mance, from 1990-93. She served as guest editor for the special issue, Feminist Revisions in Folklore Studies, Journal of FolkZore Research; and has authored: “Gender Representations in Performance;” “Power and the Ritual Genres,” Western Folklore; “Festival,” in The Encyclo- pedia of Communication, and “Asante Queen Mothers: a Study in Identity and Continuity,” in Gender and Identity in Africa, Colloqui- um Proceedings, University of Bayreuth (1992).

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Africa (After map provided for the exhibition “Africa Exploreb,” 1991. by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).