African Studies students to present research findings

African & African Diaspora Studies (AADS) graduate students and instructors will present their research findings from this summer’s study abroad program to Senegal and The Gambia at the AADS & GSS Graduate Colloquium from 1:30 p.m. until 4 p.m., Sept. 3 in LC 110 on FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus.  The colloquium will precede the annual AADS Welcome Back Reception at 4:30 pm in LC 110.  Both events are free and open to the public.

The study abroad group will also participate at the Conference on Tourism and Seductions of Difference Sept. 9-12 in Lisbon, Portugal.  Both the FIU presentation and the Lisbon panel are entitled “The Revelation, Re-Affirmation, and Re-Invention of Self Through the ‘Discovery,’ Consumption, and Experiencing of Others: Globalization and Interactions in Senegambian Tourism Formations.”

The AADS & GSS Graduate Colloquium will provide students the opportunity to share their experiences and findings from their study abroad research with the FIU community, while simultaneously preparing them for the Lisbon conference. Organized by Jean Rahier, anthropologist and AADS director, the panel will explore academic tourism, heritage or roots tourism, and sex tourism as globalized formations in the Senegambian region of West Africa.

“The papers are the product of field research conducted by our study abroad students during the five-week program, which focused on traditions, globalization, and tourism in West Africa,” Rahier said.

“We understand tourism formations as processes that always involve ‘exotic’ seductions and desires for the ‘unfamiliar,’ which result from a linkage between structure and representation, where specific tourism projects ideologically work to make these links.  A specific tourism project is at the same time an interpretation, a representation, and an explanation of social dynamics that combine to bring in, reorganize and redistribute resources along particular socioeconomic and racial lines.”

The upcoming events are products of the first AADS study abroad program, and FIU’s first study abroad program to West Africa.  Open to FIU and non-FIU students, the AADS study abroad program came into being after the sustained and rigorous efforts of the AADS leadership and team, which included collaborations with the Office of Education Abroad (OEA), and School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at FIU, the University of the Gambia (UTG) in Banjul, and the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in Dakar, Senegal.  Plans already are under way to expand and improve the program for 2011.  For more information, visit the AADS website at http://africana.fiu.edu.