Meet the Professor: Abosede George
Meet Associate Professor Abosede George! Professor George teaches in the Department of Africana Studies and in the Department of History.
What is the most interesting aspect of teaching at Barnard?
I wouldn’t use the word interesting because it’s too ambiguous. I would say that the most inspiring aspect of teaching at Barnard is being in a community where I know others are just as excited about the art of teaching as I am. So many colleagues are pedagogical innovators, experimenters, tinkerers who really get into puzzling out the pedagogical problems of their fields. It’s fun and inspiring to be part of a teaching community of peers who keep striving to perfect the process.
Could you speak about current/recent research that you’re excited about?
I’m really excited to be returning to my main research project which is a social history of migrant communities in nineteenth-century Lagos. In the nineteenth century, particularly the second half, free black people from the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as various West Africans from throughout the region came to cities like Lagos to establish new lives, to recover lost histories, and to find opportunity. The questions I am interested in have to do with traveling while Black in the nineteenth century, making, unmaking, and remaking diasporas, historical understandings and experiences of black citizenship in the modern period, and historical cosmopolitanisms in African towns and cities. I’ve been working on this migration history project for a while but also lately not working on it while I was working on other things. Multi-tasking is a myth! I’m excited to be returning to this research and giving it dedicated time and attention, which is the only way that good work gets done.
Why did you decide to teach at a historically women's college?
I do feel that working and learning in a pro-women environment or in a feminist community is enriching and empowering to all people. I think such environments free you to go deep into yourself and encourage you to nurture your particularities. I think it’s from the place of deep self-knowledge and self-acceptance that we are able to fulfill our greatest potential and communities like Barnard can be enabling environments for that kind of growth. Overall, I love teaching at a women’s college because I feel like I can directly contribute to creating that kind of enabling environment for young women scholars.
What are your favorite classes you currently teach/have taught at Barnard?
I teach African history classes, both seminars and lectures, except for an interdisciplinary class that I teach each Fall term called Intro to African Studies, which I love teaching, by the way. I also love the modern African History lecture class (where we met) because I love revisiting the grand scope of the continent’s recent history and connecting it to events and processes in global history and sometimes even to what’s going on right here right now in our moment in time. Africa’s history is always renewed and further complicated for me through each iteration of that class. But then again I also love the seminar classes where we read closely and think deeply about knowledge production, and the seminar just feels like an amazing book club / writing workshop. Having said that, I’m actually working on Phase 2 of a digital history seminar on African migrations that was inspired by my research blog. That class has bigger ambitions than any other seminar I’ve taught. It's challenging and also really fun to experiment with digital forms of knowledge production, and especially how to teach these forms. How can I choose favorites really? It’s impossible! My favorite classes to teach are just the ones where students really open up, not just to me or to the subject of our focus, but also to each other. That’s when the class turns into a learning community and we are all in it together and magical things happen.
-Interview by Emily Ndiokho