Elliot Steeves-

Macalester College Professor Jessica Lynne Pearson will deliver an African/African Diaspora studies sponsored lecture on African Tourism in the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on Senegal. The lecture will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 11, at 7:00 p.m.

Jessica Pearson’s specialty is Tourism in the African continent. The lecture, entitled “Colonial Hangover”, will also relate to issues of independence. The two focuses will be on how colonial legacies shape tourist hotels and on how tourists engage (or do not engage) with an independent African nation.

“My sense is that, in the time of independence, colonial powers were, and are, still present,” Director of African/African Diaspora Studies and Professor of History Kathleen Keller said. “The history of tourism is an interesting topic that students might find innovative.”

The lecture is an opportunity for students to learn about how the fight for independence unfolded in the continent of Africa. The tourism industry is an innovative way to look at that fight.

“Many independent African nations chose to develop tourism infrastructure and entire industries,” Pearson said. “Some hotels cultivated a segregationist culture. There are two sides to the same coin. On one hand, you have to develop your economy. But at the same time, that might be an outpost of colonialism, even after it ends.”

Pearson is writing her first book on this topic, entitled Traveling to the End of Empire: Leisure Tourism in the Era of Decolonization. This is Pearson’s first time presenting material from the book in public.

“I started working on this project in 2018. My first project was on the history of public health in Africa, and there was a lot of hotel segregation,” Pearson said. “I decided that it would be very interesting to talk about how the hotel industry shapes colonialism and decolonization.”

“I hope that students will come since this aspect of African history isn’t very well known,” Keller said.

Pearson’s other main area of expertise is within public health, where she wrote her first book, The Colonial Politics of Global Health: France and the United Nations in Postwar Africa. 

Pearson’s lecture is part of a series of several that the African/African Diaspora studies program has been putting together to put the program further forward.

“She is someone that I am close to, who I wanted to bring in to talk about Africa,” Keller said. “Next semester, we will host a lecture about the African Diaspora. We wanted to do one talk about Africa, and another about the Diaspora.”

The African Studies program, now named the African/African Diaspora Studies program, was started in 2012 after a student approached French and African Studies Professor Paschal Kyoore with the idea for a new major.

“There was a vacuum in the Gustavus curriculum, and we needed something that focused on Africa,” Kyoore said. “Africa is often marginalized in colleges across the country, and there still isn’t enough of a focus on it.”

Kyoore went to the faculty at Gustavus and was successfully able to put together a program. However, it took the form of a minor, rather than a major.

“We didn’t have enough courses…[so] the minor was the best option,” Kyoore said.

The African/African Diaspora Studies program not only serves as a crucial area for the diverse demographics of both Gustavus and the state of Minnesota, but also an interdisciplinary program that incorporates different areas of student interest.

“The profile of both African and African American students has increased, so we need a program for that,” Kyoore said. “The demographics of Minnesota consist of a large immigrant population, even in Mankato and St. Peter.”

The program not only benefits these immigrants from Africa to the United States but incorporates knowledge about the African Diaspora in other countries such as Brazil. “There is room for everyone in our minor. We get History students, we get English students, and we offer courses in Philosophy, French, and other topics. The list goes on,” Keller said.

“Majors and General Education both benefit,” Kyoore said. “We create opportunities for students to bring together ideas that they have thought about in different courses.”

At Macalester College, there isn’t a major or minor, but an entire multidisciplinary concentration on the continent of Africa and the diaspora.

“There is something interesting about an interdisciplinary approach to studying the continent. I’m drawing on literature, TV, and film, and the ability to look at all different angles is important,” Pearson said. “I was able to find so many perspectives from people in Africa, and even looked at the Caribbean and India in the new book.”

For both Macalester and Gustavus, centering African voices is a crucial goal. Doing that with multiple disciplines is something that they strive for so that students can explore many different pathways within that study.