2006.03.01: March 1, 2006: Headlines: COS - Senegal: Film: The Third Goal: Anthropology: Western Connecticut State University: RPCV Dr. Robert Whittemore has maintained both his academic specialization in African ethnography and his personal ties to the continent rooted in his family’s life-changing experiences in Senegal
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2006.03.01: March 1, 2006: Headlines: COS - Senegal: Film: The Third Goal: Anthropology: Western Connecticut State University: RPCV Dr. Robert Whittemore has maintained both his academic specialization in African ethnography and his personal ties to the continent rooted in his family’s life-changing experiences in Senegal
RPCV Dr. Robert Whittemore has maintained both his academic specialization in African ethnography and his personal ties to the continent rooted in his family’s life-changing experiences in Senegal
Dr. Robert Whittemore’s African journey began in summer 1968 when he arrived as a fresh recruit to the Peace Corps, ready to embark on training in preparation for three years’ service with his wife Elizabeth as volunteers in the west African nation of Senegal. Nearly four decades later, the WestConn professor of anthropology continues that journey as producer and coordinator of the annual African Film Festival, which this February marked its 10th anniversary at the university. For Whittemore, his Peace Corps experience planted the seeds of a lifelong professional interest in Africa that brought him back to Senegal, together with his wife and daughter Miranda, to pursue field research from 1979 to 1982 among the youth of the indigenous Mandinka population. His doctoral dissertation, “Dali Lo: Toward an Ethnography of Childhood,” explored the development over a two-year period of 80 Mandinka youths who assumed the role of surrogate caregivers for their younger siblings while their parents worked to eke out a subsistence living. Since earning his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, Whittemore has maintained both his academic specialization in African ethnography and his personal ties to the continent rooted in his family’s life-changing experiences in Senegal. When he joined the WestConn faculty in 1995, he sought out fresh opportunities to share his appreciation for Africa’s cultural richness and diversity with a wider audience both on- and off-campus.
RPCV Dr. Robert Whittemore has maintained both his academic specialization in African ethnography and his personal ties to the continent rooted in his family’s life-changing experiences in Senegal
Dr. Robert Whittemore’s African journey began in summer 1968 when he arrived as a fresh recruit to the Peace Corps, ready to embark on training in preparation for three years’ service with his wife Elizabeth as volunteers in the west African nation of Senegal. Nearly four decades later, the WestConn professor of anthropology continues that journey as producer and coordinator of the annual African Film Festival, which this February marked its 10th anniversary at the university.
For Whittemore, his Peace Corps experience planted the seeds of a lifelong professional interest in Africa that brought him back to Senegal, together with his wife and daughter Miranda, to pursue field research from 1979 to 1982 among the youth of the indigenous Mandinka population. His doctoral dissertation, “Dali Lo: Toward an Ethnography of Childhood,” explored the development over a two-year period of 80 Mandinka youths who assumed the role of surrogate caregivers for their younger siblings while their parents worked to eke out a subsistence living. Since earning his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, Whittemore has maintained both his academic specialization in African ethnography and his personal ties to the continent rooted in his family’s life-changing experiences in Senegal. When he joined the WestConn faculty in 1995, he sought out fresh opportunities to share his appreciation for Africa’s cultural richness and diversity with a wider audience both on- and off-campus.
The result was the launch in 1997 of the African Film Festival, which during the past decade has screened nearly 40 works directed by filmmakers from across the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions of the continent. This year’s 10th-anniversary screenings featured a retrospective selection of five features from previous festivals, chosen by Whittemore for their artistic quality and representation of important recurring themes in African cinema. The festival, “The Best of Ten Years of African Films,” featured films from Senegal and Burkina Faso that retold ancient folk tales, reinterpreted the legend of Prosper Merimee’s “Carmen,” and explored the struggle of contemporary Africans to establish their economic and cultural independence in an era of globalization. The festival’s opening feature,
“Wend Kuuni” (“God’s Gift”) by director Gaston Kabouré, recast an ancient folk tale of the Mossi people of present-day Burkina Faso as a metaphor for a post- colonial Africa fragmented by social, economic and cultural dislocation. Kabouré’s camera captured the harshness of the arid sub-Saharan landscape, the unhurried pace and quiet beauty of traditional customs, and the hardship of subsistence rural village life, portrayed by amateur actors drawn from the local population.
“I love the way Kabouré starts off with a broken family that, like the broken Africa, keeps hoping that the father will come back, that a former order will be restored,” Whittemore said. The abandoned boy who ultimately gains acceptance in a new family “walks off into the distance at the end of the movie, suggesting that even the most severe of dislocations can, with the support of kin, lead to the accomplishment of great things.”
For Whittemore, the festival has provided an opportunity to share the texture of everyday life, the heritage of popular tradition and culture, and the complexity of social, economic and political problems confronting the peoples of a diverse continent. “I wanted to bring people something that is more than a National Geographic or Discovery Channel feature, something that really lets the voice of indigenous African filmmakers and actors speak,” he said. “African cinema is artistically sophisticated, but also willing to be experimental. It has a different way of deciding what should be committed to film than we are accustomed to.”
Developments in Africa attract scant press coverage or popular awareness in the United States, Whittemore said, so the festival affords an opportunity to educate filmgoers about the realities of contemporary Africa. “I want them to see that Africa is a rich, diverse, complex place,” he said. “Even to call it ‘Africa’ is a stretch: Most people are connected to their community, their family, perhaps their country, but rarely see themselves as ‘African.’ I want people to think about this vast continent three times the size of the United States in a more sophisticated way.”
Whittemore credited his ability to stage the festival annually to the financial support provided by the Class of 1961 John Tufts Memorial Fund, the WCSU International Center, and the Office of Disability Services and Multicultural Affairs. By purchasing master copies of featured works on videocassette, he has built one of the region’s largest libraries of African films that are made available for WestConn classes and other instructional purposes. He will continue to seek new selections for the film library as he plans for future African Film Festivals, typically offered each February in celebration of Black History Month.
“It’s part of my life and part of my discipline as an Africanist,” he said. “It’s also part of what we as a university can do as a place where you can enter into a world of new, challenging ideas. “For me,” Whittemore added, “the festival means being able every year to enjoy the sounds, sights and quality of life that has been such a big part of my family’s experience, and draw other people into thinking about Africa not as some far-off place, but as a more accessible place where they might want to go.” For more information, call Whittemore at (203) 837-8461.
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Headlines: March, 2006; Peace Corps Senegal; Directory of Senegal RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Senegal RPCVs; Film; The Third Goal; Anthropology; Connecticut
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Story Source: Western Connecticut State University
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