Northeastern Illinois University Associate Professor of English and African/African American Studies Chielozona Eze has been awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, his second South Africa-based fellowship in as many years.
Eze will travel to South African in May and June of 2017 to work with Stellenbosch University and Professor Louise du Toit on a project titled “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Exploring the Interplay of African Philosophy and Literature for Curriculum Co-development and Collaborative Research.”
The Stellenbosch University project is one of 69 projects that will pair African Diaspora scholars with higher education institutions in Africa to collaborate on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training and mentoring activities. Eze is one of 70 African Diaspora scholars who have been awarded fellowships to travel to Africa beginning in December 2016 to conduct a wide range of projects across disciplines, from agroforestry to e-learning modules for nursing, and from ethnomusicology to military mental health.
Now in its fourth year, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program has helped 239 African-born scholars who have been living and working in North America to connect with their peers at universities throughout Africa.
The program is designed to build capacity at the host institutions in Africa, and to develop long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships between the universities. The fellowships are funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education.
The United States International University-Africa in Kenya provides strategic direction through Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and an advisory council he chairs. The program selects projects that were proposed by the host universities and matches them with African-born scholars, covering the visiting scholars’ expenses, including transportation, a daily stipend, and the cost of obtaining visas and health insurance.
Earlier this year, Eze spent six months as a fellow with the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study to work on a book project titled “Transcultural Affinity: Cosmopolitan Imagination in Post-Apartheid South Africa.”
