Tape 3

The Northwestern University Archives’ collection of audiotapes from the Program of African Studies lectures dates from the period 1965-1979. Soon after its own establishment, the Program initiated a "Monday Night Lecture Series." This series sponsored speakers to visit Northwestern’s Africa House (or another lecture hall if an unusually large crowd was anticipated) and speak on some topic relating to Africa. The variety of speakers is extremely wide, ranging from academics to political figures to authors and artists.

The tape recordings found here date from the period when Gwendolen M. Carter was director of the Program of African Studies, with Ibrahim Abu-Lughod as her associate director. Carter became director of the program in 1964, just before the audio tapes of the lecture series begin. It seems apparent that the recordings in this collection do not represent all of the Program lectures held during the period 1965-1974. Some years hold considerably fewer lecture tapes than others. Records of the Program of African Studies (University Archives Series 35/13) mention lectures that are not included in these recordings. It does appear, however, that the recordings in this series constitute the majority of the lectures sponsored from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s. The recordings reflect not only the Monday Night Lecture Series; the include other Africa-related lectures, conferences and and events. (Numbered as part of this series is a group of radio broadcast feeds from The Voice of America’s "African Panorama" series. These recordings pertain to the Matebele tribe of what was then Rhodesia (audiotapes 271-276).) Some other audiotapes record Program staff meetings or conferences.

The speakers recorded in this series came from many backgrounds and areas of academic study. They include members of Northwestern University faculty and staff as well as faculty from other universities and colleges around the world. Frequent speakers include Carter and Abu-Lughod themselves, Frank Willett, Remi Clignet, George Shepperson, Klaus Wachsmann, Richard Wilson, and Ronald Cohen, among others. Many of the speakers at Africa House during this lecture series were notable figures in politics, academia, or literature. Prominent among the speakers are: Chinua Achebe (novelist), Oliver Tambo (South African leader and politician), Dean ffrench-Beytagh (anti-apartheid religious leader), Ali Mazrui (public intellectual), C.L.R. James (radical historian), Thurston Shaw (English archaeologist), Aidan Southall (English anthropologist), Ernest Gellner (philosopher and anthropologist), A. Ado Boahem (Nigerian historian), Nadine Gordimer (South African writer), Malcolm Guthrie (linguist), Eqbal Ahmad (Indian academic and radical activist), Ezekiel Mphalele (South African writer), Akin Mabogunje (Nigerian historian), Janheinz Jahn (authority on African religion), Dennis Brutus (Northwestern professor and South African poet and activist), and Shula Marks (South African historian).

An inventory of these audiotapes was prepared (in 2009?) as an Excel spreadsheet. Although it appears that the machine-readable version of that spreadsheet has not survived, there remain two printouts of it. (These are both held in box 14.) The information in this finding aid is a combination of information from this spreadsheet, information taken from the records of the Program of African Studies, and information written on the tape boxes themselves. When details from these three sources do not agree; this finding aid shows the differences.

The audio tapes vary in both sound quality and physical condition. Some are perfectly audible, others are difficult to hear at all. General notations on quality and condition (taken from the inventory spreadsheet) are included in this finding aid. (These comments were added to the spreadsheet when it was created (2009?); they do not reflect any changes to the tapes since that time.) A few of the audiotapes included this series appear to be blank; whether they were erased or just too damaged or physically degraded is unknown.