Mohamed Kamara to Deliver Lecture in Honor of His Appointment to the H. Laurent Boetsch Jr. Term Professorship in International Education Kamara’s talk, “Reconceptualizing Humanitarianism,” will be held Nov. 13 in Hillel 101.

By Brian Laubscher
October 29, 2024

Mohamed Kamara, professor of French at Washington and Lee University, will present a public lecture to mark his appointment to the H. Laurent Boetsch Jr. Term Professorship in International Education at W&L.

Kamara’s lecture, “Reconceptualizing Humanitarianism,” will be held at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 13, in Room 101 of the Hillel House. The talk is free and open to the public.

Kamara’s discussion will center on the concept of humanitarianism and will delve into why and how we undertake humanitarian actions, including an examination of where the term “human” within humanitarianism. In engaging these points, Kamara will lean mainly on notions of liminality, on Jamaican writer and critic Sylvia Wynter’s intersectional reconceptualization of what it means to be human, as well as on the theories and practice of love as promoted by Martin Luther King Jr. and former Senegalese statesman and poet Léopold Sédar Senghor.

“The keyword in humanitarianism is obviously ‘human,’ yet the meaning and practice of that simple concept vary more or less wildly from crises to crises and from people to people,” says Kamara. “Ultimately, the way we respond to crises, both within and outside of our borders, is determined, to a large extent, by our definition of ‘human.’ This is the issue that interests me, and it is what I will engage in my talk.”

Kamara recently authored the book “Colonial Legacies in Francophone African Literature: The School and the Invention of the Bourgeoisie,” which analyzes the representation and lasting impact of the colonial school and bourgeoise in Francophone sub-Saharan literature. He is also the author of “When Mosquitoes Come Marching In,” a 2021 play on the civil war in Sierra Leone that occurred from 1991­–2002.

Kamara first joined the W&L faculty in 2001, and he has served as the chair of the Romance Languages Department since 2022. He is also a core faculty member and former chair of the Africana Studies Program. Kamara holds a Bachelor of Arts in French and English and a diploma in secondary education from Fourah Bay College (University of Sierra Leone). He also earned a Master of Arts in French from Purdue University and a doctorate in French from Tulane University.

The H. Laurent Boetsch Jr. Term Professorship in International Education was established in 2014 with the leadership gifts of Bernard C. “Ben” Grigsby II ’72 and his wife, Carol P’12. It is a permanently endowed fund providing support for a faculty member in the College or the Williams School who has scholarly and teaching interests that significantly involve expertise in and exposure to topics in international education. The award recognizes a different professor every three to five years.