In summer 2013, I convened with Alsaan Sow an interdisciplinary multicampus working group to trace the shifting status of ‘work’ (liggéey) in Wolof cultural production since the neoliberal restructuring of the Senegalese economy in the 1980s and 90s. This project was funded by the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the Mellon Foundation, through their initiative on ‘The Humanities and Changing Conceptions of Work.’  Our broad aim was explore how Senegalese writers, filmmakers and artists took stock of the structural adjustment era. During the six-week session, we discussed novels, films, and aesthetic theory as well as more popular media.

The working group drew a mix of faculty and students from UC Berkeley and UC Davis, as well as Stanford, Brown and George Mason Universities. For many of us, these conversations helped push our work in new directions. My own involvement in the group developed into my 2022 essay “The Labor of the Living Dead.”