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Faculty
Najjar Abdul-Musawwir, Professor
Drawing, Painting, Core Curriculum
Najjar Abdul-Musawwir was born October 25th, 1958, in Chicago, Illinois. He is an internationally-acknowledged artist who has exhibited throughout the United States, Africa, Asia and Europe. He currently works as a Professor of studio arts and art history in both the School of Art and Design and Africana Studies program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
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![Najjar Abdul-Musawwir](https://academics.siu.edu/design/_common/images/faculty-staff/art/studio/najjar-abdul-musawwir.jpg)
Allyn Building 5A
618-453-3019
mekka@siu.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Getahun Benti, Professor
Office Hours: T &R 10-1 virtual
Getahun Benti is a Professor of History at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He received his Ph.D. in African history and urban studies from Michigan State University in 2000 and came to SIUC in the same year. He teaches a variety of courses in African and world history, including a comparative slavery course.
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Joseph A. Brown, SJ, Professor
Joseph A. Brown, S. J., Ph.D. a native of East St. Louis, Illinois, is a Catholic priest with an extensive academic and pastoral career. When he graduated from St. Louis University with the BA in Philosophy, he attended Johns Hopkins University, where he gained a Master's Degree in Creative Writing. After his ordination to the priesthood (1972) he taught Theater and Poetry at Creighton University for several years (eventually becoming artist-in-residence in 1978). Later, after receiving both the Master's degree in Afro-American Studies and the Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, Fr. Brown taught at the University of Virginia and at Xavier University in New Orleans.
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![Joseph A. Brown](../../_common/images/faculty/africana/jbrown.jpg)
Faner 4024
618-453-7147
jbrownsj@siu.edu
F: 618-453-7131
Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
Qiyu Chen, Assistant Lecturer
Qiyu Chen is a scholar of African literature with transnational and comparative perspectives. She earned her dual-title Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and African Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2024 and her B.A. in English and History from Tsinghua University (Beijing) in 2019. Her research interests include modern African literature (Anglophone and Kiswahili), Cold War literary studies, Africa-China literary relations, Black Internationalism, postcolonial theory, and African feminism.
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Abdelkader Cheref, Assistant Professor
Dr. Abd-el-Kader CHEREF is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at SIU which he has joined this 2024 Fall semester. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and Africana Studies trom the University of Exeter in the UK. Previously, he earned an MA in Atrican American Literature from the University of Nottingham (UK) and the University of Oran in Algeria.
His anti-racist and justice-oriented teaching and research interests center on 20th and 21st century Anglophone and Francophone postcolonial African literatures, post-WWII African American literature, African cinema, colonization, decolonization, as well as Pan-Africanism.
His teaching philosophy is centered around the idea that all students are welcome in his classroom where diverse standpoints, ideas, and voices are appreciated.
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Frank Chipasula, Professor
Malawian poet, editor and fiction writer, born on 16 October 1949; B.A. (with Credit) University of Zambia, 1976; M.A. (Creative Writing) Brown University, 1980; M.A. (Afro-American Studies) Yale University, 1982 and Ph.D. (English Literature—Yeats) Brown University, 1987. Currently a Professor in the Black American Studies Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, I have taught at Howard University, Tamkang University in Taipei, Taiwan, University of Nebraska at Omaha, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, as well as Brown and Yale Universities. For a year I served as Education Attaché in the Malawi Embassy in Washington, D.C. I have also worked as English Editor for NECZAM Ltd., the former national publishers of Zambia in Lusaka (1976 – 1978) and, as an undergraduate student at the University of Malawi, I freelanced on the M.B.C. (Malawi Broadcasting Corporation) in Blantyre, Malawi (1971 – 73).
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Ted Cohen, Associate Professor, Affiliate faculty
Ted Cohen (BA, Yale University; Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park) is a historian of Latin America and the African diaspora. He is interested in the racialization of culture, space, and knowledge in regions of the Americas not typically associated with Blackness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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Leonard Gadzekpo, Associate Professor, Judge Williams Holmes Cook Professor
Dr. Leonard Kodzo Gadzekpo was born in Cote d'Ivoire and grew up in Ghana. He got his first degree from the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, and taught in Ghana and Nigeria. He spent four years in Germany as an artist working on religious art pieces for the St. Stepanus Katholische Gemeinde in Oldenburg and studied at Universitaet Oldenburg and Salzburg Universitaet, Austria. From 1990 to 1997 he did graduate studies at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio and earned a M.A. in German, a M.F.A. in Painting and a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies.
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![Leonard Gadzekpo](../../_common/images/faculty/africana/leonard-gadzekpo.jpg)
Faner 4022
618-453-7152
gadzekpo@siu.edu
F: 618-453-7131
Maria Johnson, Associate Professor
Music
Maria Johnson is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the School of Music at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale where she regularly teaches two CORE Curriculum courses-- Music 203 - Diversity & Popular Music in American Culture and Music 303I - Women, Blues & Literature, offers topics courses in Ethnomusicology-- Women in Music and Music and Social Change, and supervises graduate and undergraduate independent studies in ethnomusicology.
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Segun Ojewuyi, Professor/Head of Directing
Ojewuyi's international career as a Theater director/Critic/Actor and Scholar has covered parts of Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, America and the Mediterranean. His directing credits include the major playwrights of world drama - Shakespeare, Soyinka, Becket, Wilson, Miller, Brecht, Grass, Chekov, Ibsen, Fugard to list a few. His productions have been on stage in some of the very top Theaters of the world - the Birmingham Rep, Liverpool Playhouse, Everyman Theater Liverpool, Yale Repertory Theater, Public Theater Pittsburgh, Balhaus Theater in Berlin, the Oregon Shakespeare, St. Louis Black Rep., Habima Theater in Tel Aviv and the National Theater in Lagos, Nigeria, directing the National Troupe of Nigeria, amongst many others, garnering strong international reviews.
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Jean-Pierre Reed, Professor
J.-P. Reed received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He joined Sociology at SIU in 2009, became an Affiliate of Africana Studies in 2010, and since 2023 he has been an Africana Studies faculty. Dr. Reed teaches courses on W.E. B. Du Bois, Racial Inequality, the Civil Rights Movement, and Race and Ethnic Relations. Thus far, his scholarship has focused on understanding revolutionary/political agency, much of it centered on subjective factors: political emotions, popular culture/ideology (e.g., religion), and narrative. His scholarship also underscores the significance of contingency (events) as an equally important dimension of revolutionary/political agency/mobilization.
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![Joseph A. Brown](../../_common/images/faculty/africana/reed.jpg)
Faner 3426
618-453-7610
reedjp@siu.edu
Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
Joseph Smith, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Philosophy
Philosophy, Africana Studies
Dr. Joseph L. Smith has a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in the School of Africana and Multicultural Studies, and the School of History and Philosophy. Smith received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (2020), an LL.M. in International Economic Law from Xiamen University (2021), M.A. in Black Theology from Union Theological Seminary in NYC (2006), and a B.A. in Philosophy from Kutztown University (2001). Smith's teaching and research interests include Black Male Studies, Africana Philosophy, Foucault Studies, Prison Studies, and the emergence of the Breton-Woods Institute, WTO, Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements.View Full Bio
![Joseph Smith](../../_common/images/faculty/africana/smith-joseph.jpg)
Faner 4032
618-453-7145
smithjl@siu.edu
F: 618-453-7131
Curriculum Vitae (PDF)