91亚色 Professor Emeritus John S. Saul and 91亚色 Distinguished Research Professor in African history and Canada Research Chair Paul Lovejoy will be presented with the awards during the opening reception of the conference of the Canadian Association of African Studies 鈥� Africa Here; Africa There 鈥� at 91亚色 May 5 to 7.

As 91亚色 history Professor Jos茅 C. Curto, co-organizer of the conference along with sociology Professor聽Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, says, 鈥淭hey鈥檝e spent a lifetime fighting, in one way or another, for Africa. You can鈥檛 get any better than them.鈥�

Right: John S. Saul

President of the CAAS Dennis Cordell聽wrote that聽Saul鈥檚 research achievements, along with his 鈥渄eep and long-standing commitment to the struggle for equity, equality and human rights in Africa鈥� are legion. He also pointed to Lovejoy鈥檚 鈥渨onderful abilities to teach and mentor鈥� students and younger colleagues.

Left: Paul Lovejoy

Lovejoy says the award is significant to him 鈥渂ecause of the recognition of my contribution to understanding the history of people of African descent especially so since this is the UN International Year for People of African Descent and my personal commitment to exposing the crime of the 鈥榮lave route鈥� and seeking reconciliation that can only be based on truth about the past.鈥�

In addition to receiving lifetime achievement awards, both Saul and Lovejoy will launch books in conjunction with the conference Saturday, May 7, at Accents on Eglinton Bookstore, 1790 Eglinton Ave. W., Toronto. Saul鈥檚 Liberation Lite: The Roots of Recolonization in Southern Africa (Three Essay Collective) will launch beginning at 6:30pm, followed by The Harriet Tubman Institute Series of which Lovejoy is the general series editor at 7pm. There are 10 books in the Tubman series, including Slavery, Islam and Diaspora; Africa, Brazil and the Construction of Trans Atlantic Black Identities; and Africa and the Americas: Interconnections During the Slave Trade.

Liberation Lite is comprised of聽five essays. 鈥淭he theme I鈥檓 emphasizing is that of liberation as a multiplex concept,鈥� says Saul. His definition of liberation would include race, nation, class and gender, but also a democratically empowered voice. "Others in Africa and elsewhere聽have come to define liberation only in terms of the narrow construct of national independence."

Saul says liberation has to be multidimensional to be a useful concept. 鈥淲e expected the liberation struggle would yield more than that,鈥� more than simply national liberation, but also class, race and gender freedom.聽聽It is not simply an emphasis that聽"we white lefties had dreamt up and聽taken over to Africa. We learned it there. We learned it there from Mozambique's Eduardo Mondlane, FRELIMO's first president, for example.鈥� As it stands, 鈥渓iberation has been pretty light and those who are concerned have to figure out how to deepen and enrich聽it,鈥� he says. He also takes a聽critical stance towards global capitalism and corporate imperialism, and what he calls聽the "re-colonizing" of Africa by a new "empire of聽capital". In consequence, the concluding essay looks at why socialism still has significant resonance and merit in southern Africa and beyond.

Saul has published聽some 19聽books, including Revolutionary Traveller: Freeze Frames from a Life (Arbeiter Ring, 2009) (see YFile, Jan. 13, 2010), Development after Globalization: Theory and Practice for the Embattled South in a New Imperial Age (Fernwood Publishing, 2006) and Decolonization and Empire: Contesting the Rhetoric and Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond (Fernwood Publishing, 2008).

He is hard at work on three more books. He says the lifetime achievement award聽may well be聽an acknowledgement of his body of work, but聽he is also accepting it 鈥渙n behalf of all those who have worked diligently in support of聽South African-related struggles over the years, as well as against Canada's own complicity 鈥� that is, our government and corporations too often being on the wrong side of such struggles there.鈥� In 2004,聽Saul was elected fellow of the .

Last year, Lovejoy received the Distinguished Africanist Research Excellence Award from the University of Texas at Austin for his dedication, lifetime of service and contributions to the discipline. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History, and has dedicated his career to researching and teaching African history.

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Lovejoy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History, has dedicated his career to researching and teaching African history. He is currently working on several projects, including ongoing research on the African abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, and he is just starting a new project,聽 titled "Breaking the Chains: Presenting a New Narrative of Canada's Role in the Underground Railroad".

Left: Paul Lovejoy accepts the Distinguished Africanist Award in Texas from Ed Dorn, former dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin

"Being recognized in this fashion came as a complete surprise to me, hence what this has meant to me is very personal," says Lovejoy. "As I listened to the statement of my achievements, I felt very humble and appreciative of everything that 91亚色 has allowed me to pursue, every dream of collaboration and every attempt to increase the accessibility of knowledge so that people can learn their own histories."

In August,聽Lovejoy will return to Sierra Leone, where he is principal investigator on a British Library grant under their Endangered Archives Program. He also plans to finish what he calls a long-overdue book this summer, Testimonies of Enslavement: Stories of Slavery in Central Africa. In addition, as director of the Harriet Tubman Institute, he is involved in the organization of various conferences and workshops, about eight over the coming year.

"The award is important because it recognizes what we are doing at the Tubman Institute and it shows that Canada is not peripheral to the history of Africans in diaspora."

He has authored, co-authored or edited 36 books, including , and . In 1994, his co-authored book received the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize from the Canadian Historical Association.

He is series editor for the Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora with an initial 20 volumes set for publication by the end of 2010. In some of his recent publications, he has reopened debate on the role of slavery and the slave trade in Africa. Although trained as an economic historian, Lovejoy has argued forcefully that slavery and the slave trade were unlike any other institution or trade. Slaves, he argues, were "people" active in the shaping of their world and not "things" as commonly expressed in many slave studies.

He is a leading scholar who pioneered the study of the history and dynamics of the African diaspora from an African perspective. Through his research, he traces the history of migration from Africa into diaspora, following individual enslaved Africans to their destinations in the Americas. Lovejoy collaborates with an international network of researchers in Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, Brazil, Latin America, Africa and Europe, creating digitized historical data for his research.

His contributions and investment in African studies are reflected in his dedication to scholarship, administrative leadership, mentoring and interdisciplinary innovation.

Lovejoy is聽a research professor at the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery & Emancipation at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom and a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project in Paris. He聽received a President's聽Research Award of Merit from 91亚色 last year (see YFile, Nov. 5, 2009). In 1994 and 1995, he received the Canada Council for the Arts Killam Senior Research Fellowship.

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