The presenter for our annual 1996 Richard Wright Lectures was Professor Manthia Diawara. He is professor of film, and the Director of the Africana Studies Program and the Institute of Afro-American Affairs at New York University. Professor Diawara is a native of Mali, who after receiving his education in France, travelled to the United States where he received his Ph.D at Indiana University. He has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Indiana University Press, 1992) and Black American Cinema: Aesthetics & Spectatorship (Routledge, 1993). Professor Diawara has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the black Diaspora. He is also the co-director with Ngugi wa Thiong'o of Sembene Ousmane: The Making of African Cinema. He is currently working on a book on comparative Afro-modernism.
The lectures were held March 19, 20, and April 3, 1996. The topics
of discussion were "Pan Africanism and Pedagogy" (3/19), "Richard Wright
and African Modernity" (3/20), and "Rouch in Reverse" (4/3), which
included a screening of Professor Diawara's film of the same title.