William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts and Co-Director of the Africana Studies Department, French and Francophone Studies, Africana Studies
Chérif Keïta is a William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts, and the Co-Director of the Africana Studies Department at Carleton College. He specializes in teaching Francophone literature of Africa and the Caribbean, as well as advanced languages courses.
He attended the Institut Superieur de l’Etat des Traducteurs et Interprètes in Brussels to become a licensed translator in English and Russian. He later moved to the United States to study at the University of Georgia, where he received his MA in French and a PhD in Romance Languages.
A native of Mali, Chérif has published books and articles on both social and literary problems in contemporary Africa. His most recent literary works about South African history and culture include the book Nokutela: The Story of a Forgotten Woman Leader and the biography of a Malian musician, Outcast to Ambassador: The Musical Odyssey of Salif Keita. His special interests include the novel and social change in Mali, oral tradition, and the relationship between music (traditional and modern), literature and culture in Africa.
Professor Keïta is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker who made Remembering Nokutela, Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa, and Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube, a trilogy of films about some of the founding figures of the African national Congress of South Africa. His documentaries have been featured in many international film festivals, news articles, and radio shows where he has been able to talk about the importance of his films on local and global communities around the world, but particularly in Mali. Through his public scholarship, Chérif has been able to preserve the memory and commemorate the history of South African people. You can read more about Chérif’s film Remembering Nokutela from this BBC article and Oberlin-Inanda from this story on LeFaso.net.
Chérif has done research and scholarship with students in South Africa on topics like “Poetry, Performance and the Politics of Identity in South Africa.” You can read more about his research in a blog post from the Northfield Historical Society where he also talks about the connections he discovered between him, Northfield and South African leaders.