Charles D. Piot, Professor and Bass Fellow

Office Location:	210 Friedl Building, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address:
Web Page:	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MfEmEwrdHI&list=PLgBIp6MpvvCNr6moOHOuN54db_xB3kV_5&index=5

Teaching (Fall 2023):   (typical courses)

• Aaas 103.01, Intro to african studies Synopsis

  Old chem 116, TuTh 11:45 AM-01:00 PM

• Culanth 350.01, Anthropology of money Synopsis

  Social sciences 136, TuTh 08:30 AM-09:45 AM

• Ph.D. University of Virginia 1986
• M.A. University of Virginia 1982
• B.A. Princeton University 1973

Specialties:

Transnationalism

Political Economy

Post Colonialism

Popular Culture

Africa

African Diaspora

Research Interests:

I do research on contemporary culture and politics, as well as on histories of slavery and colonialism, in francophone West Africa. My first book, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (1999) attempted to retheorize a classic out-of-the-way place as within the modern and the global. My recent book, Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa After the Cold War (2010), explores the way in which human rights discourse, democratization, NGOs, and charismatic Christianity are remaking sovereignty, the biopolitical, and political culture in West Africa. An in-progress book on Togolese applying for, and attempting to game, the US Diversity (green card) lottery also explores the experiences of West African expatriates in the US and Europe. I am co-editor of the journal Cultural Anthropology through 2015.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Piot, C. Nostalgia For the Future: West Africa After the Cold War. University of Chicago Press, 2010. (Winner of the African Politics Conference Group Award for Best Book on African Politics published in 2010)
2. Piot, C. Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. University of Chicago Press, 1999. (Co-winner of the Royal Anthropological Institute's Amaury Talbot Prize for Africanist Anthropology and a finalist for the African Studies Association's Herskovits Prize. French translation - "Isolement Global: la Modernite du Village au Togo" - Karthala Press, 2008.)
3. Piot, C. "Heat on the Street: Video Violence in American Teen Culture." Journal of Postcolonial Studies  vol. 6 no. 3 ( 2003): 351-365.
4. Piot, C. "Des cosmopolites dans la brousse." Les Temps Modernes  vol. 57 no. 620-21 ( 2002): 240-260.
5. Piot, C. "Atlantic Aporias: Africa and Gilroy's Black Atlantic." South Atlantic Quarterly  vol. 100 no. 1 (January, 2001): 155-170. [Gateway.cgi], [doi]