The free, public Gottchalk lecture in history will begin at 5 p.m. in Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium. The UofL history department is sponsoring the event and the public reception afterward.
MacGaffey is professor emeritus of anthropology at Haverford College and a consultant to the Grassi Museum in Leipzig, Germany. He is expected to discuss the relationship between history and anthropology in studying the African past. MacGaffey is known for a series of articles using anthropological critiques of the way African history has been written.
His books include “Custom and Government in the Lower Congo,” “Religion and Society in Central Africa” and “Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular.”
MacGaffey taught at Haverford from 1967 to 1997 after earning his anthropology doctorate at University of California-Los Angeles. He received a John Simon Guggenheim memorial fellowship in 1993.
The Gottschalk lecture series is named for former UofL professor Louis Gottschalk, who served as president of the American Historical Society.
