Vesna Gjaja '72 has been appointed Interim Assistant Vice President for Alumni Affairs, replacing Steve Lobel '70, who resigned to work in the private sector, it was announced by Christian G. Kersten, Vice President for University Advancement.
Gjaja has been Director of Community Affairs with the University for the past four years. A search process for the permanent alumni affairs position will commence shortly, Kersten said.
In addition, he announced that Christine Bouchard, formerly of the Division of Student Affairs, has taken the position of Interim Director of Community Relations. A systems-user liaison in student affairs for the past 10 years, and prior to that on staff in the registrar's office and in admissions, Bouchard played an active role in Commencement activities for several years.
Her office will be located in Administration 237, her phone number 442-5309. Gjaja will be located in the Alumni House, phone number 442- 3080.
As the current millennium approaches, many scholar of Africa are voicing the concern that the understanding of continent must be reimagined, reconfigured and reconstructed.
"Such anxieties, which affect all fields of area studies, have perhaps struck African studies most profoundly," said Iris Berger of the University's departments of history, Africana studies and women's studies, in delivering the Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, held in San Francisco Nov. 22 - 26.
Her talk, entitled "Contested Boundaries: African Studies Facing the Millennium," discussed recent challenges both to African studies and to area studies more generally.
"The combination of national funding cuts, shifting foundation priorities, the end of the Cold War and the consequent marginalization of Africa has crated a climate of disquiet and questioning among scholars of the continent," she told the association on Nov. 24.
Berger countered that this is not a time to "lose confidence in what African studies has accomplished . . . I would opt for a different strategy - for acknowledging and addressing critiques of the field, at the same time recognizing what scholars have accomplished in the years since World War II." She said the 21st Century would offer new issues and challenges that will involve scholars of Africa who continue to collaborate across regional and disciplinary boundaries.