Author Biography
A native of Mali, Chérif Keita (Ph. D, University of Georgia) is the William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts at Carleton College (Minnesota), where he teaches Francophone literature of Africa and the Caribbean, as well as advanced languages courses. He has published widely on a number of topics including social and literary issues in contemporary Africa, the novel and social change in Mali, oral tradition, and the relationship between music, literature and popular culture in West Africa.
Keita is also the director and producer of a trilogy of documentary films about a number of ground-breaking 19th and 20th century Black intellectuals in South Africa. His latest film, “Namballa Keita: A Soldier and His Village”, tells the story of his late father’s service in the French colonial troops during WWII.
