Art, Oppression, Protest and Survival:

The Pende in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,

a lecture by Herbert Weiss, part of Africa Atlanta 2014

4:00 – 5:30 April 24

Seminar Room, Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking

 A reception will follow the lecture.

Herbert Weiss is a senior fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute of International Studies, New York City as well as a senior fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington D.C.

Herbert Weiss is a political scientist who has worked in Africa for many decades.  Forced to leave Vienna as a small boy, Weiss moved to Khartoum, where he and his family lived during the Second World War. Following study at the University of Paris and Columbia University, Weiss studied the independence movement in the Belgian Congo. He arrived in the Congo for the first time in 1959 where he met many figures in the Congolese independence movement. In 1960 he traveled extensively in the Congo with leaders of the independence movement and worked with Patrice Lumumba.  His work in the Congo led to his book, Political Protest in the Congo (Princeton, 1967) [French translation: Radicalisme Rural et Lutte pour l’independence au congo-zaire (Paris 1968, 1994) which received the Herskovitz Prize for the best book of 1968 in African Studies.  His work became associated with ‘rural radicalism’ in contrast to theories that associated political change with a ruling elite.  In 1986 he organized a Paris conference on the Congo rebellions. He has taught at CUNY and has been a consultant to international organizations. Weiss returned to the Congo most recently in March of 2014.

Professor Weiss’s talk is being held in conjunction with the exhibition, “Mapping Place: Africa Beyond Paper,” at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, as part of Africa Atlanta 2014, an initiative of the Georgia Institute of Technology Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Belgium in Atlanta.

The visit of Herbert Weiss is sponsored by Africa Atlanta 2014.