Clément A. Akassi

E-mail: cakassi@howard.edu

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Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in History at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (2023) and Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and World Cultures at Howard University. Originally from Ivory Coast, a Francophone country in West Africa where he completed his undergraduate and part of his graduate studies. With a Ph.D. in Afro-Latin American Literature and Studies from the Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, his research focuses on African and diasporic studies in Francophone, Hispanophone, Lusophone (including Anglophone) worlds from interdisciplinary perspectives and Afro-postcolonial and Afro-decolonial theories. Since 2017, he has frequently been a visiting professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, teaching courses in the Graduate Programs in History and Letters. Additionally, he has conducted research stays in Cuba and served as a visiting professor at various universities in the United States, Canada, Ivory Coast, Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, France, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Senegal, among other countries. He served as President of the College Language Association (CLA) and is the founder of MUNTÚ, an International and Interdisciplinary Research Group for African Studies and African Diasporas. Author/editor of five books and numerous articles published in various national and international journals. His current research focuses, though not exclusively, on the themes of African/diasporic migrations, womanism/afro-feminism, the reinterpretation of the African concept of Muntú (a variation of Ubuntu), Afrolatinidad/Afro-Latinx Studies, and the development of a book addressing the notions of decolonizing imaginaries and epistemologies.

Main Publications

• “Descolonizar la producción de saberes y los discursos tradicionales sobre las  migraciones, los desplazamientos y los movimientos  africanos/diaspóricos”, em Clément Animan Akassi (ed.), Migraciones, desplazamientos y movimientos africanos/diaspóricos, Cali: Programa Editorial de la Universidad del Valle, 2023, p. 23-37.
• “Le tournant du Muntu africain de Manuel Zapata Olivella dans la décolonisation des  épistémologies et des imaginaires en Amérique Latine”, em Assia Mohssine (ed.), Sociocritique  et tournant décolonial. Convergences et perspectives. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2023, p. 125-156.
• Migraciones, desplazamientos y movimientos  africanos/diaspóricos.  Historias, políticas y poéticas. Cali: Programa Editorial de la Universidad del Valle,  2023.
• “El Muntú: propuesta de una epistemología africana para descolonizar los imaginarios y los discursos latinoamericanos sobre las identidades”,  Sociocriticism,  XXXVI/1,  2022.
• Complejidades poscoloniales sobre la territorialidad y la desterritorialidad (trans)nacionales en las  producciones culturales africanas, Impossibilia, Revista Internacional de Estudios Literarios, 19, 2020.