Cilas Kemedjio
Cilas Kemedjio is Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. His research focuses on the memory of slavery, the decolonization of the theoretical infrastructure of postcolonial literatures, the representation of the black body, “anthropological mutilation” and critical investigations of humanitarian interventions in Africa. His books include De la Négritude à la Créolité : Maryse Condé, Édouard Glissant et la malédiction de la théorie (1999), Mongo Beti, le combattant fatigué : une bibliographie intellectuelle (2013), Remember the Flame: White Papers from the 1990 Yaoundé University Strikes (2013). Kemedjio is co-founder and Co-facilitator of Critical Investigations Into Humanitarianism in Africa (cihablog.com), which seeks to challenge unequal hierarchies wihtin the humanitarian galaxy with the view of bringing about more egalitarian exchanges in the redemption of our shared humanity. His latest publication (Cilas Kemedjio and Cecelia Lynch, Eds. “Who Gives to Whom”: Reframing Africa in the Humanitarian Imaginary. Palgrave Macmillan (May 2024). He is working on a monograph tentatively entitled “The Humanitarian Misunderstanding” and a collective volume on the representation of African Americans in the African Imagination. During his tenure as Director of the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies (2010-2020), he held the Frederick Douglass Professor Chair.