Sankofa Journeys Speaker Series presents Dr. Ismael Montana

African Identity Then and Now: The Effects of Colonialism on African Tradition, Music, Dance, and Clothing.

The African Arts Institute (AAI) is proud to announce the next webinar of its series, Sankofa Journeys Speaker Series, dedicated to showcasing African artists, scholars, and cultural practitioners shaping African arts today. Every session, we highlight creative voices whose work preserves, reimagines, and celebrates African identity across disciplines.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Ismael Montana is a historian of slavery in Ottoman Tunisia and the western Mediterranean rim. He holds a master’s degree in Diplomacy and International Relations from the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies (University of Malta) and a Ph.D from York University (Toronto). He is a Professor of History at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Dr. Montana is the past President of the West Africa Research Association (WARA), a non-profit academic organization that promotes research on West Africa and its diaspora and facilitates exchanges between West African scholars and their counterparts in the region, in the United States, and elsewhere. As an African historian, one of his goals is to highlight the study of Africa’s past in order to shed light on the ties that bind the African Diaspora world.

He is the author of The Abolition of Slavery in Ottoman Tunisia, a co-editor of Islam, Slavery and Diaspora, and the author of numerous articles on the history of slavery in North Africa and the Middle East.

The African Arts Institute invites all community members to join us for this dynamic session.