The Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco invited Christopher Wise to give a talk, “Yambo Ouologuem, Le devoir de violence, et l’Umarian Tijaniyya,” at the launching ceremony for the Chair of African Literature and Arts on May 17, 2022, in Rabat. Wise was also recently invited to attend the inaugural celebration of the construction of the “Grand Projet de Complex de Halvar d’El Hadj Oumar Foutiyou Tall.” (See video.) The complex will be one of the largest in the Islamic world and will include le Palais de Reception, la Grande Mosquée Familiale, le Temple des Lumières, Umarian archives, a university, and also a hospital. Wise has conducted research in Halwar for many years and has brought WWU English students there in the Senegal Program to meet with Tijaniyya leaders. The inaugural celebration of the Tall Complex, which was attended by numerous African presidents, religious leaders, and other dignitaries, was held in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo, on May 28, 2022, where Wise also spoke about his research.
Wise’s translation of a book-length poem by the Tuareg poet Hawad, In the Net, also appeared in 2022 from the University of Nebraska Press as part of Kwame Dawes’s African Poetry Book Series. In the Net, written in Tamajaght with tifinagh characters, is an epic of war about the rise and fall of the briefly lived state of Azawad in Northern Mali and the Tuaregs’ struggle for independence. The Tuareg are a semi-nomadic Amazigh (or “Berber”) people, who have inhabited the Sahara for centuries in places like Timbuktu, Gao, Kidal, Gao, Agadez, and elsewhere. Hawad is also a visual artist who converts tifinagh alphabetic characters from Tuareg writing into paintings and drawings, including the image on the cover of In the Net. Wise’s daughter Ayesha Wise (BA in Fine Art, 2017) made a brief documentary about Wise and Hawad’s meeting in Aix En Provence. (See video.). Excerpts of Wise’s translation of Hawad’s book also appeared in a special issue of the Bellingham Review on West African writing, which was edited by Susanne Paola with Kristiana Kahakauwila and Wise.
In addition to these accomplishments, Wise recently published “Decolonization or Redemption? The One-State Solution: Unsilencing Gaza and Liberating Palestine” in Arena Quarterly, No. 7 (2021) and a review of Alexander Thurston’s Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel in Reading Religion.
