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Samba Camara, ‘Islam and the Musical Expression of Faith in Contemporary Senegal’
October 25, 2018 at 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Samba Camara is a teaching assistant professor at the Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies and serves as the coordinator of the African Language Program at the African Studies Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Arts, with concentration in African literature and performance. Camara’s teaching and research interests follow an interdisciplinary path, cutting across literature, film and performance studies.
He is currently working on two book projects. One is a monograph entitled, Beyond the Praise Song: Islam, Popular Music and the Poetics of Cosmopolitan Nationhood in Senegal. The study draws from both fieldwork and content analysis of songs and examines how Senegal’s Islam-infused popular music carries and disseminates a Sufi-Muslim philosophy of tolerance as preached in the teachings of 20th century Senegalese Muslim authors. His other project is a Wolof language textbook coming out of his eight years of language teaching experience. This talk is part of the Thursday Jama series sponsored by the Carolina Seminar in African Ecology and Social Processes. The Thursday Jama is open to all area faculty and graduate students in any discipline. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free. Please contact Stacey Sewall for more information.