Professor Ken Harrow: Obituary
Toyin Falola
The world has lost an influential scholar. He was an accomplished scholar in the fields of African cinema, African Literature, and Postcolonial studies, among other related fields, over the past five decades. After graduating with a B.S. from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1964, he moved to New York University to complete his graduate studies in English (M. A. in English, 1965) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1970). Even as he worked towards his doctoral degree (thesis: “The Transformation of the Rebel: A Comparative Study of the Works of Albert Camus, Ignazio Silone, and Arthur Miller”), he began teaching at Michigan State in 1966.
By 1989, Harrow earned a full appointment as a Professor in the Department of English after teaching in the Department of Humanities from 1966 to 1989. He complemented his appointment at MSU with multiple terms outside of Michigan, including Summer, Spring, and Winter terms in London, Paris, Dakar, and Mexico, as well as visiting professorships at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop-Dakar in Senegal (Department of English, 1989) and the University of California, San Diego (Department of Literature, 1989). From 1982 to 1983, he delivered important lectures at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, and the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He also taught in Cameroon. For over two decades, Professor Harrow was very active in administration at Michigan State University, where he served as the Director of the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature (2000-2002) and later as a Faculty Excellence Advocate (2011-2015).
Professor Harrow’s scholarship is significant because it greatly altered the contemporary understanding of African literary modes. His scholarly published work, represented by edited volumes, over fifty journal articles, and two dozen book chapters, together with his single-authored books, illustrate his stellar academic stature and lasting contributions to the field. His book, Thresholds of Change in African Literature: The Emergence of a Tradition (1994), considered twentieth-century developments and novel tendencies in African literature as the continent managed the pressures and ambiguities of the postcolonial social situation.
In his Less than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Women’s Writing (2002), Professor Harrow again broke new ground on relatively unsurveyed spaces of literary criticism, using psychoanalytical methods to map out a critical understanding of the literature of francophone African women writers. In his third book, Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (2007), he reassessed the scholarship on African cinema by returning to the first techniques of African filmmaking and the initial critical reactions to them to interrogate the premises and the state of contemporary criticism of African cinema. Professor Harrow’s most recent monograph, Trash! African Cinema from Below (2013) is equally trendsetting. It treats modern developments in popular African filmmaking in a globalized world, analyzing certain contemporary aesthetic tendencies through the figure of trash in African cinema.
In addition to his accomplishments as an author, Professor Harrow has been active in forging fruitful scholarly discourses and interactions in the academic community in the United States and across the African Diaspora during his years as a scholar, a teacher, and a mentor at Michigan State University. From the early 1990s, edited important special issues in academic journals on themes such as “African Cinema,” “African Nationalisms,” and “Violence in Africa,” and convened, organized, or coordinated several conferences (notably the 1986 and 1997 African Literature Association conferences held at MSU). He has also given innumerable invited lectures at universities in the United States and North and West Africa on topics ranging from African cinema and literature, modernism, and postmodernism to postcolonialism.
Simultaneously, Professor Harrow served in professional capacities for various organizations and publishers. He was the African Film Editor for the African Studies Review, the General Editor of the African Humanities and Art Series of Michigan University Press, a member of the editorial board of Research in African Literatures, and an occasional reviewer of African literature for such journals as PMLA, World Literature Today, and Africana Journal, among others. He was a member of the Executive Council of the African Literature Association (1981-84; 1992-95), as well as Vice President (1987-1988) and President (1988-1989), and also as a member of the Executive Board of the African Studies Association (1997-2000). He continued to organize the Film Showings and Video Film Marketplace of the African Studies Association. Apart from these important services to the academic community, Professor Harrow was a member of multiple award committees, from the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association to the James Lowell Prize of the Modern Literature Association.
His scholarly and professional work in the field has been recognized by numerous awards, beginning with an early award in the early 1970s, the NEH Younger Humanist Award, that enabled him to travel and conduct research in France, Algeria, and Morocco. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship later in the decade to research and lecture on American Literature at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon (1977-79) and again a few years later to conduct research in Dakar (1982-83). In the past fifteen years, Professor Harrow received another Fulbright fellowship on exchange at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (2005-2006) and other prestigious awards. The African Literature Association awarded him its first Distinguished Member Award in 2009. Michigan State University also recognized him with the Distinguished Faculty Award (2010) and the Paul Varg Alumni Award for Faculty. The University of Texas at Austin equally earned him the Distinguished Africanist Award (2011). The African Studies Association awarded him the African Studies Association Public Service Award and, most recently, the Distinguished Africanist Award.
Professor Harrow’s impact transcended academia. Outside of academia, Professor Harrow served as a member of the United States Coordinating Committee for Central Africa of Amnesty International, specifically as the country coordinator for Burundi and Rwanda. In this capacity, he served as an expert witness to numerous asylum cases for these countries. He also served as coordinator for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After over forty years of remarkable research, teaching, and service at Michigan State University, Professor Harrow retired from MSU.
Rest In Peace.
PS: This piece was written when Ken was alive.
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
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On 16 Apr 2024, at 14:21, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
--The world has lost an influential scholar. He was an accomplished scholar in the fields of African cinema, African Literature, and Postcolonial studies, among other related fields, over the past five decades. After graduating with a B.S. from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1964, he moved to New York University to complete his graduate studies in English (M. A. in English, 1965) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1970). Even as he worked towards his doctoral degree (thesis: “The Transformation of the Rebel: A Comparative Study of the Works of Albert Camus, Ignazio Silone, and Arthur Miller”), he began teaching at Michigan State in 1966.
By 1989, Harrow earned a full appointment as a Professor in the Department of English after teaching in the Department of Humanities from 1966 to 1989. He complemented his appointment at MSU with multiple terms outside of Michigan, including Summer, Spring, and Winter terms in London, Paris, Dakar, and Mexico, as well as visiting professorships at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop-Dakar in Senegal (Department of English, 1989) and the University of California, San Diego (Department of Literature, 1989). From 1982 to 1983, he delivered important lectures at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, and the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He also taught in Cameroon. For over two decades, Professor Harrow was very active in administration at Michigan State University, where he served as the Director of the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature (2000-2002) and later as a Faculty Excellence Advocate (2011-2015).
Professor Harrow’s scholarship is significant because it greatly altered the contemporary understanding of African literary modes. His scholarly published work, represented by edited volumes, over fifty journal articles, and two dozen book chapters, together with his single-authored books, illustrate his stellar academic stature and lasting contributions to the field. His book, Thresholds of Change in African Literature: The Emergence of a Tradition (1994), considered twentieth-century developments and novel tendencies in African literature as the continent managed the pressures and ambiguities of the postcolonial social situation.
In his Less than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Women’s Writing (2002), Professor Harrow again broke new ground on relatively unsurveyed spaces of literary criticism, using psychoanalytical methods to map out a critical understanding of the literature of francophone African women writers. In his third book, Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (2007), he reassessed the scholarship on African cinema by returning to the first techniques of African filmmaking and the initial critical reactions to them to interrogate the premises and the state of contemporary criticism of African cinema. Professor Harrow’s most recent monograph, Trash! African Cinema from Below (2013) is equally trendsetting. It treats modern developments in popular African filmmaking in a globalized world, analyzing certain contemporary aesthetic tendencies through the figure of trash in African cinema.
In addition to his accomplishments as an author, Professor Harrow has been active in forging fruitful scholarly discourses and interactions in the academic community in the United States and across the African Diaspora during his years as a scholar, a teacher, and a mentor at Michigan State University. From the early 1990s, edited important special issues in academic journals on themes such as “African Cinema,” “African Nationalisms,” and “Violence in Africa,” and convened, organized, or coordinated several conferences (notably the 1986 and 1997 African Literature Association conferences held at MSU). He has also given innumerable invited lectures at universities in the United States and North and West Africa on topics ranging from African cinema and literature, modernism, and postmodernism to postcolonialism.
Simultaneously, Professor Harrow served in professional capacities for various organizations and publishers. He was the African Film Editor for the African Studies Review, the General Editor of the African Humanities and Art Series of Michigan University Press, a member of the editorial board of Research in African Literatures, and an occasional reviewer of African literature for such journals as PMLA, World Literature Today, and Africana Journal, among others. He was a member of the Executive Council of the African Literature Association (1981-84; 1992-95), as well as Vice President (1987-1988) and President (1988-1989), and also as a member of the Executive Board of the African Studies Association (1997-2000). He continued to organize the Film Showings and Video Film Marketplace of the African Studies Association. Apart from these important services to the academic community, Professor Harrow was a member of multiple award committees, from the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association to the James Lowell Prize of the Modern Literature Association.
His scholarly and professional work in the field has been recognized by numerous awards, beginning with an early award in the early 1970s, the NEH Younger Humanist Award, that enabled him to travel and conduct research in France, Algeria, and Morocco. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship later in the decade to research and lecture on American Literature at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon (1977-79) and again a few years later to conduct research in Dakar (1982-83). In the past fifteen years, Professor Harrow received another Fulbright fellowship on exchange at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (2005-2006) and other prestigious awards. The African Literature Association awarded him its first Distinguished Member Award in 2009. Michigan State University also recognized him with the Distinguished Faculty Award (2010) and the Paul Varg Alumni Award for Faculty. The University of Texas at Austin equally earned him the Distinguished Africanist Award (2011). The African Studies Association awarded him the African Studies Association Public Service Award and, most recently, the Distinguished Africanist Award.
Professor Harrow’s impact transcended academia. Outside of academia, Professor Harrow served as a member of the United States Coordinating Committee for Central Africa of Amnesty International, specifically as the country coordinator for Burundi and Rwanda. In this capacity, he served as an expert witness to numerous asylum cases for these countries. He also served as coordinator for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After over forty years of remarkable research, teaching, and service at Michigan State University, Professor Harrow retired from MSU.
Rest In Peace.
PS: This piece was written when Ken was alive.
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Claire Princess Ayelotan
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On 16 Apr 2024, at 14:21, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
The world has lost an influential scholar. He was an accomplished scholar in the fields of African cinema, African Literature, and Postcolonial studies, among other related fields, over the past five decades. After graduating with a B.S. from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1964, he moved to New York University to complete his graduate studies in English (M. A. in English, 1965) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1970). Even as he worked towards his doctoral degree (thesis: “The Transformation of the Rebel: A Comparative Study of the Works of Albert Camus, Ignazio Silone, and Arthur Miller”), he began teaching at Michigan State in 1966.
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Edward Kissi
On Apr 16, 2024, at 8:51 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
A life very well spent.
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On 16 Apr 2024, at 14:21, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
The world has lost an influential scholar. He was an accomplished scholar in the fields of African cinema, African Literature, and Postcolonial studies, among other related fields, over the past five decades. After graduating with a B.S. from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1964, he moved to New York University to complete his graduate studies in English (M. A. in English, 1965) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1970). Even as he worked towards his doctoral degree (thesis: “The Transformation of the Rebel: A Comparative Study of the Works of Albert Camus, Ignazio Silone, and Arthur Miller”), he began teaching at Michigan State in 1966.
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Osakue Omoera
We just lost a great humanist and an academic of no mean repute. May the soul of Prof Kenneth Harrow rest in peace. I recall when I was at Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma and was serving as the secretary to the Faculty of Arts Conference Committee, Prof Harrow and some other leading Africanist scholars supported us in successfully hosting the 2nd Faculty of Arts International Conference held from 11-14 March 2014, at Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. We went ahead to release a major publication from that conference: John A. I. Bewaji, Kenneth Harrow, Eunice Omonzejie and Chris Ukhun (Eds.). The Humanities and the Dynamics of African Culture in the 21st Century. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. http://www.cambridgescholars.com/the-humanities-and-the-dynamics-of-african-culture-in-the-21st-century (2017). Rest in power Great One.
Faculty of Humanities, Federal University Otuoke, Bayelsa State, Nigeria
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Mohamed Mbodj
This is very sad indeed. Ken was a friend, and our families were close at some point, when our kids were growing up. Heartfelt condolences to Lise and their kids and to this group. I welcomed Ken and his family as a Fullbright exchange in Dakar, and he did the same for me in East-Lansing. His persona on this list is the real Ken. While in Dakar he helped set up the West African Research Center and is among the founders of the US West Africa Research Association. I remember Ken volunteering to replace the Senior Faculty in the English Department in Dakar (UCAD now) while the regular Senegalese faculty was charged with setting up and starting a School of Arts, Letters, and Humanities at the University of Sant-Louis (UGB). And that was not on his initial contract, and he did get extra pay. Without him stepping in, a lot of graduate students would have been probably in some kind of trouble. Ken Harrow, along with David Robinson (the first Peace Corps in Senegal), David Wiley (the first Peace Corps in Nigeria), Bill Derman, and Harold Marcus established the first US-African universities peer-to-peer exchange and training programs from the 1970s (Dakar and Nsukka). His contributions to this Dialog list will be missed. I admit that he often chastised me when I keep reacting to his posts in private, and not on the list (my pretext being that it has become more of a “Nigerian forum”). May his blessed soul rest in peace.
Mohamed Mbodj
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Manhattanville University
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Elias K. Bongmba
This is really sad and shocking news to get. Professor Harrow is clearly a leading scholar of African literature and his publications, service, leadership, and mentorship demonstrate the best values of academia and public service. To say that he will be missed is an understatement. May his soul rest in peace.
Sincerely,
Elias
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-- Elias Kifon Bongmba PhD, DTheo (Lund) Harry and Hazel Chavanne Chair in Christian Theology Professor of Religion Associate Editor of Religion and Theology Rice university PO Box 1892 Houston TX 77251-1892 https://reli.rice.edu/faculty/elias-kifon-bongmba
Nnaemeka, Obioma G
It is devastating to lose Ken, a great champion of African studies, especially African literature and cinema. He was our North Star in African
cinema. This brilliant scholar, exemplary mentor, and cherished colleague had genuine, profound affection for Africa. He devoted his entire career to the study of Africa and civic engagement in Africa. Above all, Ken was a kind man. In everything he did, his
humanity was on full display. His large body of work remains an
unassailable legacy. He will continue to inspire. Thank you, most beloved colleague. Rest in power.
Gbolahan Gbadamosi
On 16 Apr 2024, at 13:21, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
--
Nnaemeka, Obioma G
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2024 8:18 AM
To: dialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>; Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [External] USA Africa Dialogue Series - Professor Ken Harrow: Obituary
Gbolahan Gbadamosi
On 16 Apr 2024, at 13:21, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
The world has lost an influential scholar. He was an accomplished scholar in the fields of African cinema, African Literature, and Postcolonial studies, among other related fields, over the past five decades. After graduating with a B.S. from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1964, he moved to New York University to complete his graduate studies in English (M. A. in English, 1965) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1970). Even as he worked towards his doctoral degree (thesis: “The Transformation of the Rebel: A Comparative Study of the Works of Albert Camus, Ignazio Silone, and Arthur Miller”), he began teaching at Michigan State in 1966.
By 1989, Harrow earned a full appointment as a Professor in the Department of English after teaching in the Department of Humanities from 1966 to 1989. He complemented his appointment at MSU with multiple terms outside of Michigan, including Summer, Spring, and Winter terms in London, Paris, Dakar, and Mexico, as well as visiting professorships at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop-Dakar in Senegal (Department of English, 1989) and the University of California, San Diego (Department of Literature, 1989). From 1982 to 1983, he delivered important lectures at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, and the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He also taught in Cameroon. For over two decades, Professor Harrow was very active in administration at Michigan State University, where he served as the Director of the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature (2000-2002) and later as a Faculty Excellence Advocate (2011-2015).
Professor Harrow’s scholarship is significant because it greatly altered the contemporary understanding of African literary modes. His scholarly published work, represented by edited volumes, over fifty journal articles, and two dozen book chapters, together with his single-authored books, illustrate his stellar academic stature and lasting contributions to the field. His book, Thresholds of Change in African Literature: The Emergence of a Tradition (1994), considered twentieth-century developments and novel tendencies in African literature as the continent managed the pressures and ambiguities of the postcolonial social situation.
In his Less than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Women’s Writing (2002), Professor Harrow again broke new ground on relatively unsurveyed spaces of literary criticism, using psychoanalytical methods to map out a critical understanding of the literature of francophone African women writers. In his third book, Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (2007), he reassessed the scholarship on African cinema by returning to the first techniques of African filmmaking and the initial critical reactions to them to interrogate the premises and the state of contemporary criticism of African cinema. Professor Harrow’s most recent monograph, Trash! African Cinema from Below (2013) is equally trendsetting. It treats modern developments in popular African filmmaking in a globalized world, analyzing certain contemporary aesthetic tendencies through the figure of trash in African cinema.
In addition to his accomplishments as an author, Professor Harrow has been active in forging fruitful scholarly discourses and interactions in the academic community in the United States and across the African Diaspora during his years as a scholar, a teacher, and a mentor at Michigan State University. From the early 1990s, edited important special issues in academic journals on themes such as “African Cinema,” “African Nationalisms,” and “Violence in Africa,” and convened, organized, or coordinated several conferences (notably the 1986 and 1997 African Literature Association conferences held at MSU). He has also given innumerable invited lectures at universities in the United States and North and West Africa on topics ranging from African cinema and literature, modernism, and postmodernism to postcolonialism.
Simultaneously, Professor Harrow served in professional capacities for various organizations and publishers. He was the African Film Editor for the African Studies Review, the General Editor of the African Humanities and Art Series of Michigan University Press, a member of the editorial board of Research in African Literatures, and an occasional reviewer of African literature for such journals as PMLA, World Literature Today, and Africana Journal, among others. He was a member of the Executive Council of the African Literature Association (1981-84; 1992-95), as well as Vice President (1987-1988) and President (1988-1989), and also as a member of the Executive Board of the African Studies Association (1997-2000). He continued to organize the Film Showings and Video Film Marketplace of the African Studies Association. Apart from these important services to the academic community, Professor Harrow was a member of multiple award committees, from the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association to the James Lowell Prize of the Modern Literature Association.
His scholarly and professional work in the field has been recognized by numerous awards, beginning with an early award in the early 1970s, the NEH Younger Humanist Award, that enabled him to travel and conduct research in France, Algeria, and Morocco. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship later in the decade to research and lecture on American Literature at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon (1977-79) and again a few years later to conduct research in Dakar (1982-83). In the past fifteen years, Professor Harrow received another Fulbright fellowship on exchange at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (2005-2006) and other prestigious awards. The African Literature Association awarded him its first Distinguished Member Award in 2009. Michigan State University also recognized him with the Distinguished Faculty Award (2010) and the Paul Varg Alumni Award for Faculty. The University of Texas at Austin equally earned him the Distinguished Africanist Award (2011). The African Studies Association awarded him the African Studies Association Public Service Award and, most recently, the Distinguished Africanist Award.
Professor Harrow’s impact transcended academia. Outside of academia, Professor Harrow served as a member of the United States Coordinating Committee for Central Africa of Amnesty International, specifically as the country coordinator for Burundi and Rwanda. In this capacity, he served as an expert witness to numerous asylum cases for these countries. He also served as coordinator for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After over forty years of remarkable research, teaching, and service at Michigan State University, Professor Harrow retired from MSU.
Rest In Peace.
PS: This piece was written when Ken was alive.
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Julius Eto
segun...@gmail.com
On Apr 16, 2024, at 9:48 AM, 'Patrick Effiboley' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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Emmanuel Ozoemena
Kwabena Akurang-Parry
Sent: April 17, 2024 3:48 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Professor Ken Harrow: Obituary
cornelius...@gmail.com
Dear God, dear Kenneth, dear family of Kenneth Harrow, the sad news is still numbing and we are all bereft of words for the emotions. But in the beginning and in the end and always, it’s Baruch dayan ha emet as in this special case when in this USA-Africa Dialogue Series, and in Michigan, in New York, Massachusetts, Alegria, the universities where he spread the light, in Dakar Senegal, in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in France where he spent many a summer holiday with family and invited friends, and as a champion of the human rights and dignity of all, not least of all as Amnesty International’s country specialist on Burundi and Rwanda - and of course his dreams about equality and dignity for all the peoples of the earth and of Middle East as well, we are all agreed that Ken was and is a mensch, in every sense of the word. In peace and love, including LGBTQ love, and understanding according to the ideals of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, to which we all aspire and as variously defined here in a religious sense, according to this record of some of his dvarim
In one of the last personal and private communications from Ken to me, dated 18th February 2024, as helpful and as encouraging as ever about me getting out some manuscript that he would help me to get published , he wrote, “ I'll be frank with you. I don't know how much longer i've got.” about which statement I intuited that he meant, and this too is true, that at our age - over three score years and ten - we don’t know how much longer we’ve got , before we enter the Olam Ha-ba.
Giving oxygen to those who have gone ahead of us means remembering them, talking about them, celebrating what they have achieved here , and by honouring their memory. I’m sure that the lives of the many people that Ken touched will give that oxygen, and that in due course of time, people like his dear friend Ojogbon Falola and others will see to it that some kind of Kenneth Harrow Prize / Stipendium is instituted in his honour and in his memory
Somebody please say amen to our farewell, good friend.
Chielozona Eze
What a loss! Ken has done so much for African literature and cultural studies. He has mentored some of the more thoughtful and consequential of African intellectuals such as Cajetan Iheka and Olabode Ibironke. It’s only worthy that a prize be instituted in his name. So, a loud Amen to Cornelius’s prayers.
--
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Prof. Joyce Ashuntantang
--The world has lost an influential scholar. He was an accomplished scholar in the fields of African cinema, African Literature, and Postcolonial studies, among other related fields, over the past five decades. After graduating with a B.S. from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1964, he moved to New York University to complete his graduate studies in English (M. A. in English, 1965) and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1970). Even as he worked towards his doctoral degree (thesis: “The Transformation of the Rebel: A Comparative Study of the Works of Albert Camus, Ignazio Silone, and Arthur Miller”), he began teaching at Michigan State in 1966.
By 1989, Harrow earned a full appointment as a Professor in the Department of English after teaching in the Department of Humanities from 1966 to 1989. He complemented his appointment at MSU with multiple terms outside of Michigan, including Summer, Spring, and Winter terms in London, Paris, Dakar, and Mexico, as well as visiting professorships at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop-Dakar in Senegal (Department of English, 1989) and the University of California, San Diego (Department of Literature, 1989). From 1982 to 1983, he delivered important lectures at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, and the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He also taught in Cameroon. For over two decades, Professor Harrow was very active in administration at Michigan State University, where he served as the Director of the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature (2000-2002) and later as a Faculty Excellence Advocate (2011-2015).
Professor Harrow’s scholarship is significant because it greatly altered the contemporary understanding of African literary modes. His scholarly published work, represented by edited volumes, over fifty journal articles, and two dozen book chapters, together with his single-authored books, illustrate his stellar academic stature and lasting contributions to the field. His book, Thresholds of Change in African Literature: The Emergence of a Tradition (1994), considered twentieth-century developments and novel tendencies in African literature as the continent managed the pressures and ambiguities of the postcolonial social situation.
In his Less than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Women’s Writing (2002), Professor Harrow again broke new ground on relatively unsurveyed spaces of literary criticism, using psychoanalytical methods to map out a critical understanding of the literature of francophone African women writers. In his third book, Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (2007), he reassessed the scholarship on African cinema by returning to the first techniques of African filmmaking and the initial critical reactions to them to interrogate the premises and the state of contemporary criticism of African cinema. Professor Harrow’s most recent monograph, Trash! African Cinema from Below (2013) is equally trendsetting. It treats modern developments in popular African filmmaking in a globalized world, analyzing certain contemporary aesthetic tendencies through the figure of trash in African cinema.
In addition to his accomplishments as an author, Professor Harrow has been active in forging fruitful scholarly discourses and interactions in the academic community in the United States and across the African Diaspora during his years as a scholar, a teacher, and a mentor at Michigan State University. From the early 1990s, edited important special issues in academic journals on themes such as “African Cinema,” “African Nationalisms,” and “Violence in Africa,” and convened, organized, or coordinated several conferences (notably the 1986 and 1997 African Literature Association conferences held at MSU). He has also given innumerable invited lectures at universities in the United States and North and West Africa on topics ranging from African cinema and literature, modernism, and postmodernism to postcolonialism.
Simultaneously, Professor Harrow served in professional capacities for various organizations and publishers. He was the African Film Editor for the African Studies Review, the General Editor of the African Humanities and Art Series of Michigan University Press, a member of the editorial board of Research in African Literatures, and an occasional reviewer of African literature for such journals as PMLA, World Literature Today, and Africana Journal, among others. He was a member of the Executive Council of the African Literature Association (1981-84; 1992-95), as well as Vice President (1987-1988) and President (1988-1989), and also as a member of the Executive Board of the African Studies Association (1997-2000). He continued to organize the Film Showings and Video Film Marketplace of the African Studies Association. Apart from these important services to the academic community, Professor Harrow was a member of multiple award committees, from the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association to the James Lowell Prize of the Modern Literature Association.
His scholarly and professional work in the field has been recognized by numerous awards, beginning with an early award in the early 1970s, the NEH Younger Humanist Award, that enabled him to travel and conduct research in France, Algeria, and Morocco. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship later in the decade to research and lecture on American Literature at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon (1977-79) and again a few years later to conduct research in Dakar (1982-83). In the past fifteen years, Professor Harrow received another Fulbright fellowship on exchange at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (2005-2006) and other prestigious awards. The African Literature Association awarded him its first Distinguished Member Award in 2009. Michigan State University also recognized him with the Distinguished Faculty Award (2010) and the Paul Varg Alumni Award for Faculty. The University of Texas at Austin equally earned him the Distinguished Africanist Award (2011). The African Studies Association awarded him the African Studies Association Public Service Award and, most recently, the Distinguished Africanist Award.
Professor Harrow’s impact transcended academia. Outside of academia, Professor Harrow served as a member of the United States Coordinating Committee for Central Africa of Amnesty International, specifically as the country coordinator for Burundi and Rwanda. In this capacity, he served as an expert witness to numerous asylum cases for these countries. He also served as coordinator for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After over forty years of remarkable research, teaching, and service at Michigan State University, Professor Harrow retired from MSU.
Rest In Peace.
PS: This piece was written when Ken was alive.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Adeshina Afolayan
University of Ibadan
+23480-3928-8429
mb4383 (null)
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