What? BantUGent research seminar
When? March 8, 2024
Where? Faculteitsraadzaal/Facultyroom
11:00-13:00: Simon Nsielanga Tukumu: The Decolonization of the Society of Jesus in the Belgian Congo in the post-World War II: Reasons behind the opening of the Jesuit Novitiate in Djuma
To join the meeting online by MS Teams, click here.
What? BantUGent research seminar
When? March 25, 2024
Where? vergaderzaal Simon Steven, Jozef Plateaustraat 22, 9000 Gent
15.00-16.00: Pieter De Coene: Lexicalizing spirit possession: attestations of –bandw– and related terms in Great Lakes Bantu (part one)
To join the meeting online by MS Teams, click here.
14:00-15:00: Edward Ntonda: “Chikunda in Time and Space : A Historical Sociolinguistic account”
15:00-16:00: Terefe Mitiku Mekonin “Human and animal interaction in Oromo fable”
For the Teams-link, contact: Lorenzo Maselli (lorenzo.maselli@ugent.be)
More info: Lorenzo.Maselli@UGent.be
More info: Lorenzo.Maselli@UGent.be
En collaboration avec l’Africa Platform de l’Université de Gand (UGent) et l’Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Mbuji-Mayi, nous organisons le 19 octobre 2023 une journée de présentation des projets de recherche en RDC. Pour plus d’informations voir ici. Pour vous inscrire, veuillez envoyer un email à Annelies.Verdoolaege@UGent.be ou emmanuel.kambaji@gmail.com.
What? BantUGent research seminar whith three research presentations!
When? June 29, 2023, 10am
Where? Panopticon (third floor, Blandijn) (https://www.ugent.be/lw/nl/diensten/infrastructuur/plannen/blandijn120tweede.pdf)
Who?
Prof. dr. Inge Brinkman: “Rainbows in oral narratives”
Dr. Guy Kouarata, “The simplification of seminasals *mb, *nd and *ng in Bantu zone A, B, C and H languages in Congo-Brazzaville and DRC”
Prof. dr. Maud Devos, “Coconuts in Bantu languages: a linguistic contribution to the story of Cocos Nucifera L. in (East) Africa”
A Teams link for those who wish to attend online is also available here.
On Thursday June 22, 2023, the UGent Centre for Bantu Studies and the Economies, Comparisons, Connections research group co-organize a talk by Prof. Dr. Jeroen Dewulf (University of California at Berkeley) on his latest publication Afro-Atlantic Catholics – America’s First Black Christians.
Venue: Faculty Room, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent + online via Zoom
Time: 10:30am CET
More info: Heidi.Goes@UGent.be
The latest publication by prof. dr. Dewulf examines the influence of African Catholics on the historical development of Black Christianity in America during the seventeenth century.
Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation by focusing on the enduring legacy of seventeenth-century Afro-Atlantic Catholics in the broader history of African American Christianity. With homelands in parts of Africa with historically strong Portuguese influence, such as the Cape Verde Islands, São Tomé, and Kongo, these Africans embraced variants of early modern Portuguese Catholicism that they would take with them to the Americas as part of the forced migration that was the transatlantic slave trade. Their impact upon the development of Black religious, social, and political activity in North America would be felt from the southern states as far north as what would become New York.
Dewulf’s analysis focuses on the historical documentation of Afro-Atlantic Catholic rituals, devotions, and social structures. Of particular importance are brotherhood practices, which were critical in the dissemination of Afro-Atlantic Catholic culture among Black communities, a culture that was pre-Tridentine in nature and wary of external influences. These fraternal Black mutual-aid and burial society structures were critically important to the development and resilience of Black Christianity in America through periods of changing social conditions. Afro-Atlantic Catholics shows how a sizable minority of enslaved Africans actively transformed the American Christian landscape and would lay a distinctly Afro-Catholic foundation for African American religious traditions today. This book will appeal to scholars in the history of Christianity, African American and African diaspora studies, and Iberian studies.
Contact:
Sifra Van Acker (sifra.vanacker@ugent.be)
Lorenzo Maselli (lorenzo.maselli@ugent.be)
Pre-colonial Southern Africa is characterized by two language groups: Bantu languages, who arrived through southward migrations in the last two thousand years, and Khoisan languages, spoken by some of Southern Africa’s first inhabitants. Contact between these two groups led to the demise of most Khoisan-speaking communities, but also to extensive contact-induced changes in Southern African Bantu languages. In this talk, I give an overview of Bantu-Khoisan contact, which linguistic features Bantu languages adopted from their Khoisan-speaking neighbours, and the social, cultural and economic circumstances under which these different ethnolinguistic populations interacted. Using historical linguistic methods, I show that certain Khoisan-derived features in Bantu languages date back to earlier reconstructed stages of the languages, suggesting a certain time-depth, and giving insight into how Bantu-Khoisan interactions changed throughout time.