University of Maryland
Caroline Angle is a Ph.D. candidate in the history department at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she specializes in the history of colonial North and West Africa. Her dissertation project examines how museums established by French imperial authorities in Africa were reclaimed by independent nation-states in the 1960s to create and disseminate nationalist narratives.
From Civilizing Mission to Cultural Négritude: The IFAN Ethnographic/Art Museum in Colonial and Decolonizing Senegal
This paper examines the Musée d'Art africain de l'IFAN, formerly the Musée d’Ethnographie de l’IFAN, in Dakar, showcasing the inextricability of cultural institutions and national politics. Founded in 1936, the museum’s mandate initially reflected the French civilizing mission, but upon independence, it was recontextualized in keeping with President Senghor’s policies of cultural négritude.
Sessions
The Colonial Project and its Discontents