Africana Studies Faculty

Boubacar N’Diaye - Associate Professor of Black Studies & Political Science
(330) 263-2409/ bndiaye@wooster.edu

Boubacar N'Diaye is an associate professor of Africana Studies and political science at The College of Wooster. He joined the faculty in 1999 and is an expert on civil-military relations and related security issues. His course offerings and scholarly works focus to comparative politics, democratization, the military in politics, security sector reforms in Africa, Pan-Africanism, and themes of interest to Africa and its Diaspora.

N'Diaye earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Northern Illinois University (NIU) where he also taught African Studies. He is the author of The Challenge of Institutionalizing Civilian Control: Botswana, Ivory Coast, and Kenya in Comparative Perspective (Lexington Books, 2001). He also edited a special issue of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology on military involvement in West Africa (winter 2000), and is the co-author of Not Yet Democracy: West Africa's Slow Farewell to Authoritarianism (Carolina Academic Press, 2005).

N'Diaye also does consulting work for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the World Bank, and the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum. In addition, he is involved in various academic and advocacy endeavors designed to transform security establishments and institutionalize democratic governance in the security sector of African states.

» Prof. N'Diaye's Faculty Web Site

Charles F. Peterson, Jr. - Associate Professor of Black Studies
(330) 263-2255 / cpeterson@wooster.edu

B.A. Morehouse University 1992; M.A., Ph.D. State University of New York, Binghamton, 1995, 2000.

Charles F. Peterson is an assistant professor of black studies and a founding member of the Department of Africana Studies at The College of Wooster, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2000. His areas of expertise include Africana Philosophy (socio-political theory), Afri-Marxist Philosophy, Africana Intellectual History, Africana History, African-American Literature, and cultural studies.

Peterson received his B.A. Cum Laude in philosophy from Morehouse College (1992) and his M.A. (1995) and Ph.D. (2000) in philosophy, interpretation, and culture from the State University of New York, Binghamton.

A member and former secretary for the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), Peterson has taught in Temple University's Department of African American Studies and worked as an instructor at Florida International University's African New World Studies Program.

Peterson’s work has been published in poetry and scholarly journals, and encyclopedias. His manuscript, "The Margins of Elite Anti-Colonial Leadership" was published by Lexington Books. He is also writing a monograph on popular culture and mass popular consciousness in the Africana world while serving his second term on Oberlin’s City Council.

» Profile of Prof. Peterson

Josephine R. B. Wright - Josephine Lincoln Morris Professor of Black Studies and Professor of Music
(330) 263-2044 / jwright@wooster.edu

B.M. University of Missouri 1963; M.M. Pius XII Academy (Italy) 1964; M.A. Missouri 1967; Ph.D., New York University 1975.

Josephine R.B. Wright is a professor of music and holder of the first endowed chair in Black Studies at The College of Wooster, where she joined the faculty in 1981. She is an expert in African-American music, American music, women in music, and Western music history.

Wright received her B.M. from the University of Missouri (1963). She then earned an M.M. from the Pius XII Academy in Florence, Italy (1964), and an M.A. from Missouri (1967). She completed her formal education by earning her Ph.D. in historical musicology at New York University (1975).

Wright served as editor for the refereed quarterly journal American Music (1994-97), becoming the first woman to be appointed editor for this society, and the first black to be appointed to such a position by a national musicological organization in the United States. She was former editor of Music and African-American Culture. In addition, she is a recipient of a 1999 Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of Missouri, and has received a number of grants, including the Clark Fund Award, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Award for Distinguished Scholarship. In the summer of 2006 she presented an invited paper at Oxford University, and is currently an adviser for the revised Grove Dictionary of American Music published by Oxford University Press.

Wright has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Musicological Society and the Society for American Music, and she has served on the editorial board of each society. She is also a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda Upsilon Chapter (national music honorary). A former Trustee of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and the Museum of Cincinnati, she continues to serve that organization as a member of its National Artistic Directorate.