Niara Sudarkasa Collegiate Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican & African Studies, Faculty Associate, Center for Political Studies
she/her/hers
About
Kelly Askew is Department Chair of Anthropology and Niara Sudarkasa Collegiate Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican & African Studies as well as Faculty Associate in the Center for Political Studies and Professor of Law (courtesy) at the Law School. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University and B.A. in Music and Anthropology from Yale University and has worked for over three decades in Tanzania and Kenya. Her writings and documentary film projects focus on: 1) arts, aesthetics and politics, with current projects on post-socialist poetry, post-independence African visual arts, and digitizing African music archives; (2) critical development studies, specifically concerning rural energy access and the formalization of property rights; and (3) indigenous political movements, especially of pastoralists in East Africa.
Publications include Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago, 2002), a finalist for the African Studies Association Herskovits Award, The Anthropology of Media (co-edited with Richard Wilk, Blackwell, 2002), African Postsocialisms (co-edited with Anne Pitcher, Edinburgh, 2006) and over 40 essays and book chapters. She is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants, including from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Berlin Institute of Advanced Studies, National Endowment for the Humanities, Royal Danish Embassy of Tanzania, National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, USAID, Ford Foundation, and Fulbright Association.
Recent film projects include: Orkiteng Loorbaak: Rite of Elders (Villon Films, 2017); The Chairman and the Lions (Documentary Educational Resources, 2013), which won 1st place at the ETNOFilm Festival (Croatia, 2013) and a Special Jury Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival (Tanzania, 2013); and Poetry in Motion: 100 Years of Zanzibar’s Nadi Ikhwan Safaa (Buda Musique, 2012). Her most recent production Maasai Remix (Villon Films, 2019) explores indigenous creativity in addressing challenges to Maasai pastoralist livelihoods. It won the 2020 Dikalo Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary Film at the Cannes Panafrican Film Festival (France), Jury Favorite Michigan Made Feature at the Central Michigan International Film Festival (2020), Social Issues Merit Award at Docs Without Borders (2020), and named an Official Selection at 16 international film festivals.
Research Areas(s)
- socialism/postsocialism
- critical development studies
- property rights, especially concerning land
- art, aesthetics, politics and performance
- media and ethnographic filmmaking
- cultural politics and nationalism
- indigenous political movements
- Swahili studies
- Tanzania and Kenya, East Africa
Affiliation(s):
- African Studies Center
- Donia Human Rights Center
- Institute for Energy Solutions
