The Rutgers Center for African Studies is directing Global Timbuktu: Meanings and Narratives of Resistance in Africa and the Americas, a series of educational and scholarly initiatives in both the U.S. and Mali, focused on the place of Timbuktu, Mali in the history, culture, and imagination of Africa and its global diaspora. The historic city of Timbuktu (Tombouctou) on the northern bend of the Niger River in what is now Mali has been an important center of trade and West African Islamic learning for almost a thousand years. Today, Timbuktu is often represented in the popular imagination as a distant and mythic site of mystery and frontier. In the mid-19th century, African American freepersons and abolitionists in Burlington County, New Jersey (1826) and the Adirondack area of New York State (1846) gave the name “Timbuctoo” to their new settlements that were associated with the struggle against slavery. The New Jersey “Timbuctoo” was a station on the Underground Railroad and the settlement in the Adirondacks was the home and is the burial site of John Brown, the radical abolitionist. By calling their settlements “Timbuctoo” these settlers linked their own struggle for freedom and equality with the prestige of this legendary center of Islamic scholarship and African accomplishment.
This Rutgers project brings together a range of specialists, including international Islamic scholars working to preserve the scholarly heritage and rich libraries of Timbuktu; archeologists engaged in excavation projects in Mali, New York, and New Jersey; and historians of African and African American history.
The project includes: a professional development workshop for New Jersey teachers; a “Student to Student” SKYPE project for New Jersey and Malian students; the visit of a Malian secondary school teacher to New Jersey and New York area schools; an exhibit – “Dreaming of Timbuctoo”- on the New York State settlement; and an international symposium at Rutgers University and Burlington County, New Jersey involving scholars and other specialists from Mali, South Africa, and the U.S.
For more information please contact the Center for African Studies: 848.445.6638 or
For more information, visit:
http://ruafrica.rutgers.edu/
www.timbuctoonj.com/
www.adirondack.net/history/timbuctoo/