Research Interests for Charles D. Piot

Charlie Piot, Ph.D. University of Virginia 1986, does research on the political economy and history of rural West Africa. His recent book, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa, attempts to retheorize a classic out-of-the-way place as within the modern and the global. He is currently engaged in research on two new projects. One tracks global discourses about female genital cutting (also known as FGM) from Western courtrooms and media into the capitals and villages of West Africa. The other explores the way in which human rights discourse, democratization, development, and charismatic Christianity are articulating with West African political cultures. Beyond Africa, he has research and teaching interests in African American studies, diaspora studies, pop culture, and the history of anthropology.

Representative Publications

1. Piot, C, Nostalgia For the Future: West Africa After the Cold War (2010), University of Chicago Press (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 (1999), University of Chicago Press (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), pp. 351-365
4. Piot, C, Des cosmopolites dans la brousse, Les Temps Modernes, vol. 57 no. 620-21 (2002), pp. 240-260
5. Piot, C, Atlantic Aporias: Africa and Gilroy's Black Atlantic, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 100 no. 1 (January, 2001), pp. 155-170, Duke University Press, ISSN 0038-2876 [Gateway.cgi], [doi]