Ottawa, June 2, 2010 – Mamadou Diawara, a professor at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, has been awarded this year’s John G. Diefenbaker Award by the Canada Council for the Arts. The award, worth up to $75,000, enables a scholar who is a German citizen to spend up to 12 months in Canada to pursue research in the social sciences and humanities.
Dr. Diawara will be affiliated with the Faculty of Arts at Université Laval from September 2010 to August 2011, where he will collaborate with the Canada Research Chair in African Literature and Francophonie,
Dr. Justin Bisanswa.
Dr. Diawara will carry out a research on the notion of copyright – a Western invention – in societies based on an oral tradition, as is the case in Africa and in Aboriginal communities of Canada. The time he spends at Université Laval will allow him to analyse the contents of its vast collection of recordings made in Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and France, write scholarly articles and work on a book on the historical background of artistic production standards, the transfer of oral traditions from Africa to North America through music, the registration and negotiation of state-regulated copyright.
“Dr. Diawara’s field of interest has considerable academic and social relevance,” said Thierry Belleguic, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Université Laval, in nominating Dr. Diawara. “He will analyse how the phenomenon of globalization translates in an Africa characterized by orality that sometimes affirms its local convictions and sometimes resists globalization. His presence in the faculty will enable him to expand his networks among scholars from several Canadian and American universities.”
Download photographs of Dr. Diawara.
Established in 1991, the John G. Diefenbaker Award is an annual award honouring the memory of former Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker. Candidates must be nominated by a university department or research institute in Canada. The award is provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and is supplemented by a travel allowance of up to $20,000 offered by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Funded by an endowment of approximately $2 million from the Government of Canada, the award is administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Mamadou Diawara has held the Anthropology Chair at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2004. The former director of the Institute of Anthropology, he is currently Deputy Director of the Frobenius-Institut and a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. A former Henry Hart Rice professor of anthropology and history at Yale University and a former professor of history at the University of Georgia, USA (2002-2003), he is ‘principal investigator’ for the Cluster of Excellence research project The Formation of Normative Orders at Frankfurt University and the founding director of Point Sud, a research centre on local knowledge in Bamako, Mali. Dr. Diawara’s research focuses on oral tradition and history, as well as the media and development issues in sub-Saharan Africa. His publications include L’empire du verbe - L’éloquence du silence (2003), Köln, Köppe Verlag, and, as co‑editor, Historical Memory In Africa, New York; Berghahn (2010).
In addition to its principal role of promoting and fostering the arts, the Canada Council for the Arts administers and awards many prizes and fellowships in the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural and health sciences, engineering, and arts management. These prizes and fellowships recognize the achievements of outstanding Canadian artists, scholars, and administrators. The Canada Council for the Arts is committed to raising public awareness and celebration of these exceptional people and organizations on both a national and international level.
Find a complete listing of these awards.
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