2021: Wale Adebanwi (University of Pennsylvania), “Becoming a Big Man in Africa: Subalternity, Elitism, and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria”
2020: Distinguished Conversation, Laurence Ralph (Princeton University) and Francis Nyamnjoh (University of Capetown), “Systemic Racism in Global Contexts: Legacies and Practices of Racial Violence, Representation, and Neocolonialism”
2019: Dorothy Hodgson (Brandeis University), “Gender Justice, Human Rights and the Problem of ‘Culture.'”
2018: Jemima Pierre (UCLA), “Africa, Anthropology, and the Study of Racial Capitalism: A Tribute to Bernard Magubane on the 25th Anniversary of the Association for Africanist Anthropology”
2017: James Ferguson (Stanford University), “Working the Jobless City: Rethinking Labor and Distribution via Recent Africanist Ethnography”
2016: Anita Spring (University of Florida), “Successes and Barriers to Women’s Entrepreneurship from Micro to Large Scale Enterprises
2015: Jennie Burnet (University of Louisville), “Ethnography in the Age of Total Bureaucratization: Consent, Ethics, and the Familiar/Strange of Government Oversight”
2014: Steven Feld (University of New Mexico), “The Audible Entanglements of Africanist Anthropology and Jazz Studies”
2013: Mwenda Ntarangwi (Calvin College), “Swimming Against the Tide: Hip Hop Youth Culture and Anthropology”
2012: Richard Werbner (University of Manchester), “Divination’s Grasp: Reflexivity, Prosthetics, Perception”
2011: Maria G. Cattell (Field Museum of Natural History), “Gender, Generation and Time in Sub-Saharan Africa”
2010: J. Lorand Matory (Duke University), “Sacred Double Consciousness: The Signs of Citizenship and of Spirit Possession in the Afro-Atlantic World”
2009: Karen Tranberg Hansen (Northwestern University), “Chiluba’s Trunks: Consumption, Excess, and the Dramaturgy of Power in Zambia”
2008: Bennetta Jules-Rosette (University of Califronia, San Diego), “Innovation and Agency: Structures for Change in Africa and the African Diaspora”
2007: Gwendolyn Mikell (Georgetown University), “Remembering Elliott P. Skinner: Looking Back and Moving Forward”
2006: Bogumil Jewsiewicki (Université Laval), “Postscriptural Communication, Postphotographic Images, Performance as Heritage Preservation in Africa”
2005: Gracia Clark (Indiana University), “Accountability and Authority in African Ethnography”
2004: Mahir Saul (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), “Islam and West African Anthropology”
2003: Betty Harris (Oklahoma University), “South Africa, Globalization, and Reconciliation: Renegotiating the Past, Building the Future”
2002: Carolyn Martin Shaw (University of California at Santa Cruz), “Structures, Processes, Discourses, and Action: Changing Anthropology in Africa”
2001: Parker Shipton (Boston University), “Blood, Soil, and Sovereignty in Tropical Africa”
2000: John Ogbu (University of California at Berkeley), “Ways of Knowing”
1999: Sally Falk Moore (Harvard University), “Skeptical Encounters with Development Discourse”
1998: John Middleton (Yale University), “Studying Merchants”
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Please consider making a donation to the AfAA to support our multiple programs including graduate student conference travel grants, our distinguished lecturer and conversation series, the AfAA mentoring program, the Nancy “Penny” Schwartz undergraduate and Bennetta Jules-Rosette graduate student paper awards, and our Elliot P. Skinner Book Award for Africanist Anthropology. Your support will go a long way in supporting students and elevating Africanist anthropology within the AAA.