2011 Scholar: PROF. SARA BERRY

Department of History, Johns Hopkins University

22 April 2011, 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM

Arch Crest Room, Locust Walk

 

Event Schedule:

9:30 – 10:00 AM

Welcome

 

10:15 – 11:45 AM 

Panel 1: "Histories of Development in Africa"

 

11:45 – 1:45

Lunch

 

1:45 – 3:00

Panel 2: "Gender, Space, and Livelihood"

 

2:45 – 3:00 

Break

 

3:00 – 4:15 PM

Panel 3: "Comparative Perspectives on West Africa"

 

4:15 – 4:30 PM

Break

 

4:30 – 6:00 PM

Keynote Talk by Sara Berry entitled, "Questions of ownership: Proprietorship and control in a changing rural terrain. A case study from Ghana."

 

6:00 – 7:30 PM

Reception

 

Sara Berry specializes in African history and anthropology, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of social, economic and political change. She published several books and numerous articles on 20th century African economic and social history, agrarian change, and development studies, including Fathers work for their sons: accumulation, mobility and class formation in an extended Yoruba community (University of California Press, 1985), No condition is permanent: the social dynamics of agrarian change in sub-Saharan Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); and Chiefs know their boundaries: essays on property, power and the past in Asante, 1896-1996 (Heinemann, 2000). Trained initially in economics, she has specialized in using micro-historical research to promote interdisciplinary analysis of social and economic transformations, and to bring comparative and historical perspectives to bear on understanding contemporary African political economies. Her current work uses local histories of conflict over land to examine the historically contingent nature of claims on property and their role economic and political change; relationships between struggles over property, power and the production of history; and the changing social and economic meaning of law in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

 

For inquiries please contact:

Dr.Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D, aadinar@sas.upenn.edu

(215) 898-6610