“Fostering Holocaust Education and Research in Senegal”
Professional Background
Dr. Alioune Dème is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Cheikh Anta Diop University (Senegal). He earned his PhD from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 2004. His dissertation is entitled “Archeological Investigations of Settlement and Emerging Complexity in the Middle Senegal Valley.” Dr. Dème is fluent in English, French, Fulani, and Wolof. Recent lectures include teaching at Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal since 2012; teaching African History courses at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas, 2004-2009; and lecturing in the African American Studies Program at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas from 2004-2006. While in residence in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Dr. Dème worked on his project entitled “Fostering Holocaust Education and Research in Senegal.”
Dr. Dème has authored many published works including: “Frederick Douglass’ My Bondage and My Freedom” in Frederic Douglass Encyclopedia (2010); “Colonial Environment Policies, Subsistence Strategies, and Regional Politics in the Middle Senegal Valley” in The Changing Worlds of Atlantic Africa: Essays in Honor of Robin Law (2009); “Enslavement in the Middle Senegal Valley: Archeological and Historical Perspectives” (coauthored with N. Gueye) in Archeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (2007); and “Excavations at Walaldé: New Light on the Settlement of the Middle Senegal Valley by Iron-Using People” in Journal of African Archeology (2006).
Fellowship Research
For his Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship Dr. Dème researched the atrocities committed by the Nazis against Africans and the role played by Anthropology to justify colonization and the Holocaust, in order to foster Holocaust education in Africa. Few people know of the atrocities that occurred at the hands of the Germans in Africa before and during World War II. Most of Africa was still under European control at that time which made it easier for the Nazis to use Africa as a sort of testing area for the policies of the “Final Solution” including sterilization, racial categorization, and mass murder. It also meant that Africans were serving in the Allied militaries and some were captured, tortured, or killed in German POW camps. Dr. Dème used education about the Holocaust in a broader prospective to globalize the fight against intolerance, bigotry, and hate based violence.
Dr. Dème was in residence at the Mandel Center from October 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014.