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Charlie Sugnet had spent nearly 20 years in the University's English Department before traveling to Senegal for an academic conference in 1988. "I was there for a brief period and it seemed like the most mellow place in the world," he says. But a few months after he left, groups of Senegalese burned the shops of many Mauritanians in response to problems between Senegal and Mauritania. "I realized I had misread the surface of the place."

That experience helped accelerate a shift in his evolving research, writing, and teaching interests. Once a scholar of English fiction, Sugnet now focuses his work on the literature and film of Africa and the African Diaspora. That evolution has also taken his teaching out of the traditional classroom as he spins records and stories as cohost of "African Rhythms" (with Salif Keita) on KFAI radio.

Better than Paris

Sugnet's strong research background, DJ-quality voice, and penchant for telling great stories make him a popular teacher. He has received a Bush Foundation Sabbatical Grant, was a Fulbright Lecturer and Research Fellow in Senegal, and has received a Loft Creative Nonfiction Award. He has also won the Horace T. Morse-Minnesota Alumni Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education and the Arthur "Red" Motley Exemplary Teaching Award.

His varied interests are reflected in his activities outside of the English Department. He is founder of College in the Schools, introducing world literature-including African books and materials-to 30 local schools; and since 1999 he has chosen films for the African Literature Association annual conference.

In addition, he has been affiliated with the University's Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) for the past eight years. The Center focuses on the study of developing nations in the context of global change through discussion and research, public lectures, an undergraduate honors program, and the MacArthur fellowship program.

Through the MacArthur program, students from a myriad of disciplines learn from each other and from faculty from various departments. "The students are smart, cosmopolitan people from all over the world who are trying to approach world problems at the highest intellectual level," he says. "It can be challenging to find ways to discuss things in the same vocabulary, but it works. It is astonishing what happens in this program."

One of the things that happens is the creation of an organized circulation of scholars in various countries working to break down tradition academic distance."I firmly believe that it is not possible for the western academy to produce knowledge about other places without knowing the language and the detailed contexts of those places, and without working in relatively equal collaboration-what Said called 'uncoerced contact'-with knowers from those places," he says.

So to learn from his experience in 1988-to be able to collaborate-he returned to Senegal to learn the local language, Wolof. Fortuitously for Sugnet, a dedicated music fan, his Wolof instructor was Rudy Gomis, the lead singer of one of Africa's most popular groups, Orchestra Baobab. "Rudy speaks 11 languages, so he was a good choice as a tutor," says Sugnet.

Since then Sugnet has returned to Africa frequently. In addition to research-based trips, he has led groups of U.S. students on study programs and has taught African students at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. "I taught for a year at the University in Dakar. While I was there, my name was not on the door of my office. I came back two years in a row, and my name was not on the door of my office," he says. Then, several years later, Sugnet ran into someone who told him that his name had appeared on that office door. "I went back to pose for a picture pointing at the door, and an enormous crowd of kids gathered around. 'Are you Sugnet?' they asked. 'We've been waiting for you to come back.'"

He still isn't sure if it was his teaching or the office door that created the clamor, but he certainly made a positive impact on the lives of many students. After numerous requests for help with the mysterious process of applying to graduate school in the U.S., Sugnet compiled the information and had it posted on a bulletin board at the University in Dakar. "No one in Africa can believe that the deadline is in the previous year. Then there is the whole problem of getting grades and transcripts translated."

That seemingly simple task has helped numerous students navigate the process, opening the door for still more. "At least 15 to 20 of my students from Dakar have come to Minnesota," Sugnet notes. "They get a point of connection, and they come, and that creates more connections for still others."

And while more and more students find their way to the U.S., Sugnet continues to visit Senegal. The allure, he says, is simple. "If somebody said to me, 'you can retire, money no object, in either Paris or Dakar,' I would unhesitatingly pick Dakar. It's a much more interesting city-more comfortable, more fun, more livable. It is so cosmopolitan, so smart. I would love to live there."

Radio without boundaries

On his weekly radio show (Thursdays from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.), Sugnet blends great music, education, politics, and a community bulletin board. Each part, he says, is important. "You can tell from listening to the radio show that I love the music and I enjoy doing the show. But when it comes to Africa there is just an endless stream of misconceptions. They are so incredible and so widespread."

Academically, Sugnet combats misconceptions through essays in such places as Transition, a widely distributed magazine on African issues. On the radio he translates lyrics and informs his listeners about the people and places where the songs originate. "I am trying, in a restrained way, to be pedagogical," he says. "I try not to give lengthy discourses and bore people, but I try, for instance, to remind everybody that the cool song you just heard is in a real language that people actually speak."

On a recent show, he played music and told stories about artists from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, and Haiti-all in the first half hour of the show. "I want to give at least a minimal awareness of the places and situations, which I hope is cumulative in making these real places rather than somewhere where everybody lives in a grass hut and outside of time," he says. "Africa is extremely modern."

For Sugnet, "African Rhythms" is an important part of his broader work, along with classes in the English Department, College in the Schools, the ICGC, and the film festival. Each is part of his explication of how the neocolonial state works and each allows him to share his knowledge with anyone who will listen. "I think it's just atrocious, this euphemism, the developing nation," he says. "It's a terribly threadbare excuse for neocolonial behavior that keeps reinventing itself. It becomes sustainable development or participatory development but is really the same old idea of that wherever we are in the West is the terminal point of humanity that they are supposed to approximate. It is objectionable, I think, both on philosophical and practical grounds."

Up next for Sugnet is a trip to Tunisia as part of a long-term project to study the African film movement. More broadly, the trip will give him even more to pass along, both in the classroom and over the airwaves. "I think it is especially important right now to show our students daily life in Muslim countries."

And if you can't make it to class, you will be able to hear about his trip on the radio when he returns.