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UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

 

AFRICAN STUDIES WORKSHOP

 

Wilder House, 5811 South Kenwood Avenue, Chicago, IL

Alternate Tuesdays 6pm (Autumn/Spring Quarters), 5pm (Winter Quarter)

                   Mission            Join            Contact            Archive

 

Archive

 

Spring 2009

7 April: Ccile Vigouroux (Visiting Professor, Human Development, Simon Frasier University)
    From Africa to Africa: Globalization, Migration and Language Vitality
    RED LION SEMINAR with Northwestern University's Program of African Studies

21 April: Patrick Collins (History, University of Chicago)
    Un affaire aussi dlicat: Competition over Religious Space in Constantine (1947-54)

12 May: Lindsay Weiss (Graduate Student Fellow, Anthropology, Columbia University)
    Circulation, Speculation and Contra-banditry: Illicit diamond trade in the 19thcentury
   
Diamond fields of southern Africa

19 May: Kathryn McHarry (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
    Growing the Nation: Childhood, Medicine and Development in Senegal

21 May (Thursday): Ccile Fromont (Department of Art, University of Michigan)
   
Kongo Warriors and Christian Knights: Defining and performing Power in Early
   
Modern Central Africa
   
co-sponsored with Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop

26 May: Mark Gevisser
    The Future of the South African Dream
   
co-sponsored with the Center for International Studies (CIS), Chicago Center for Contemporary
   
Theory (3CT), the Political Science Department, and the Human Rights Program

2 June: Robert Blunt (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
   
Kenyatta's Lamentation: Gluckman's Magic of Despair Revisited

 

Winter 2009

13 January: Erik Wimbley-Brodnax (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology)
    La Reunion: Consultation and Other Performances of Professionalism

                    

27 January: Franois G. Richard (Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago)
   
The Incertitude of Customs: Colonial subjectivities, material experiences, and ambiguous power in Siin (Senegal) 1850s-1930s

                    

24 February: Film Screening

 

26 February (Thursday): Adam Ashforth (Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan)

Co-sponsored event with Comparative Politics Workshop
   
Reflections on Bloodsuckers: Spiritual Insecurity, 'Human Security' and Development in Rural Malawi

            

10 March: Sarah Stein (Department of History, University of California-Los Angeles)
   
Plumes: Jews, Ostrich Feathers, and a Lost World of Global Commerce

                  

2008 Autumn Quarter

7 October: Neville Hoad (Department of English, University of TexasAustin)
   
The Poetics of PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)

                      

21 October: Graduate Student Panel: Major Grant Applications

30 October (Thursday): Jean Allman (History, Washington University in St. Louis)
   
The Disappearing of Hannah Kudjoe: Nationalism, Feminism, and the Tyrannies of History

Co-Sponsored by ASW and Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop

 

11 November: Ramon Sarr (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon)
   
Prophecies of suffering, forget\fulness and recognition: The Kimbanguist Church in Angola and Lisbon

 

25 November: Margaret Mass (PhD Student, Comparative Human Development)
   
Bodies in Development: Medicine, Selfhood, and the Senses in Ghana's Changing Ecology

                       

2 December: Bianca Dahl (PhD Candidate, Department of Comparative Human Development)
   
The Limits of Culture: Christianity and Changing Moral Discourses During Botswana's HIV/AIDS Crisis

                       

 

2008 Spring Quarter

8 April: Robert Blunt (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology)
    Corruptus Interruptus: The Limits of Transactional Imaginaries in Moi's Kenya

              
14 April (Mon): Aly Drame (History Department, Dominican University)
   
Migration, Marriage and Ethnic Identity Transformation: The Early Development of Islam in Pre-colonial Casamance, Senegal

*Co-Sponsored with Northwestern University's

Institute for the Study of   Islamic Thought in Africa and the

University of Chicago's Middle Eastern History and Theory Workshop


22 April: Cherif Keita (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Carleton College)

Film Screening and Roundtable Discussion

                                  Film: Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube

           

1 May (Thur): Nick Smith (PhD Student, Department of Political Science)
   
Neo-Liberal Democracy: Freedom, Economy, and Governmentality in Post-Apartheid South Africa

*Co-Sponsored with the Human Rights Workshop

 

6 May: Karen Morris (Anthropology, Art Institute of Chicago)
   
Placing Cte d'Ivoire: Transnational Families, Crisis, and the Imagining of a National Geography

                       

14 May (Wed): Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University)

Special Event- Red Lion Seminar

 Title: African Intellectuals React to Sarkozy's Speech in Dakar: Presenting "L'Afrique Repond Sarkozy"

*Co-Sponsored with Northwestern University's Program in African Studies

 

20 May: Jonny Steinberg

                       Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic

 

27 May: Dorothea Schulz (Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University)

From a Glorious Past to the Lands of Origin: Media Consumption and Changing Narratives of Cultural Belonging in Mali

3 June: Bianca Dahl (PhD Candidate, Comparative Human Development)

Singing with 'Sad Faces': Orphaned Children and the Performance of Grief in Botswana

 

 

2008 Winter Quarter

15 January: Paul Ocobock (PhD Candidate, History Department, Princeton University)
                               Children of Mau Mau: Youth and State During the Kenya Emergency 1952-60 


29 January:
Rosa Williams (PhD Candidate, History Department)
                    
Creating a Healthy Workforce and Limiting Contagion? British and          

                                    Portuguese Concerns for Migrant Labourers in the Transvaal , 1885-1915


12 February:
Kathleen McDougall (PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology)                          

                               Isolated Population?  Afrikaner Genealogy in Post-Apartheid South Africa

 

 

4 March: Sanyu Mojola (PhD Candidate, Sociology)

                Employment and HIV Risk: Fishing in Dangerous Waters

 

2007 Fall Quarter

2 October: Jennifer Cole (Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago)

FALL WELCOME EVENT

                               Title: "Rethinking Love in Africa/ Rethinking Love From Africa"


16 October:
Joo de Pina Cabral (Instituto de Cincias Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa)
                     Albinos Don't Die: Belief and Ethnicity in Mozambique

 
30 October:
Sasha Newell (Anthropology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
                     Gender Scams and the Bluff:
Sex and Second Economy in Abidjan , Cte d'Ivoire

                     

13 November: Birgit Meyer (Anthropology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

RED LION SEMINAR

              
                               "
There is a Spirit in that Image":

             Protestantism and Mass-Produced Pictures of Jesus in Ghana"

                              Co-sponsored with Northwestern University's Program in African Studies

 

27 November: Filipe Calvo (Ph.D. Student, Anthropology)

                            The Rough and the Cut: Extracting Value, Dealing with the State in a         

                                  Neoliberal Mining Enclave

4 December: Toussaint Losier (Ph.D. Student, History)

                       "People will be making their own bread": The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, Capitalist Democracy, and South Africa 's Politics of Non-Participation

 

2007 Spring Quarter

27 March: Katharina Schramm (Institute of Social Anthropology and GSAA, Martin-Luther-niversitt, Halle-Wittenberg/Germany)

Negotiating Race: Blackness and Whiteness in the Context of

Homecoming to Africa                                                              

 

3 April: Rosalind Morris (Anthropology, Columbia University)

                               Rush/Panic/Rush: Speculations on the Value of Life and Death in the Age of AIDS

 

12 April (Thurs): Paul Stoller (Anthropology, West Chester University )
                              Remissioning Life:
West African Wisdom and the Power of the Between

        Co-sponsored with the Medicine, Practice, and Body Workshop

 

17 April: Aurelien Mauxion (Anthropology, Northwestern University)

                        Rice Farming Intensification and Political Enterprise in Boya, Northern Mali

18-19 May (Fri-Sat): On Fetishes and Fakes: History, Authenticity and Counterfeit Modernities in Postcolonial Africa

A Conference in Honor of Ralph Austen

 

1 May: Kerry Chance (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

                        The Cut-Off: Electricity and Water Politics in the "New" South Africa

          

15 May: Duana Fullwiley ( School of Public Health , Harvard University )

                        Title: The Enculturated Gene: Making Sense of Sickle  Cell Difference

in West Africa

 

29 May: Robert Wyrod (Sociology, University of Chicago )

              From Denial to Fatalism: AIDS and the Contours of
          Masculinity in Bwaise (Uganda)

 

2007 Winter Quarter

9 January: Jennifer Cole (Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago)

                               Making Love: Attachment and Reciprocity in Tamatave,                  

                                  Madagascar

                               Co-sponsored with the Gender and Sexuality Studies Workshop

 

23 January: Mahir Saul (Anthropology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

and Ralph Austen (History, University of Chicago)

FILM & BOOK DISCUSSION

 Black and White in Colour: Africa's History on Screen (selected chapters)

                    Gaston Kabore's "Wend Kuuni" and "Buud Yam" (selections)

                    

6 February: Sanyu Mojola (Sociology, University of Chicago )

                         Dangerous Transitions: HIV, School, and Young African Women

                       

20 February: Michael McGovern (Anthropology, Yale University)

                       Making War in Cote d'Ivoire: The Politics of Ressentiment

                       

6 March: Rosa Williams (History, University of Chicago )

                               Sickness, Settlement, and Statistics:

                                  The Colonial Health Service in Mozambique, 1885-1915

                       

13 March: Jos-Mara Muoz (Anthropology, Northwestern University)

                        Coping with Success in Times of Crisis:

                                   The Economy and the Politics of Visibility in Northern Cameroon"

                       

 

2006 Fall Quarter

3 October: Jean and John Comaroff (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
                               Ethnicity, INC.

                       

17 October: Jennifer Spruill (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
                        When the Rainbow is Not Enough:

                                  Sexual Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Chapter Three: 

                                  Sovereign Subjects

                       
31 October: Bayo Holsey (African and African American Studies, Duke University )

RED LION SEMINAR

               Imagined Geographies of Atlantic Africa

                               Co-sponsored with Northwestern University's Program in African Studies

 

7 November: A.G. Hopkins (History, University of Texas-Austin)
                               Rethinking Decolonisation in the Age of Globalization

                              Co-sponsored with The Nicholson Center for British Studies and the Compative Colonialisms Workshop

 

28 November: Neil Roos (Social Studies Education, University of Pretoria)

                             Education / sex / leisure: 

                                 Whiteness and social control among South African servicemen

                                  during the Second World War

 

5 December: Fuambai Ahmadu (Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago )

                              No One Wants to be a Solimaa: Women's Voices on Female Circumcision

 

 

2006 Spring Quarter

30 March (Thursday): Richard Pithouse (Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal)

"OUR STRUGGLE IS THOUGHT ON THE GROUND RUNNING": THE UNIVERSITY OF ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO
Co-hosted with the Human Rights Workshop.

4 April: Lynn Thomas (History, University of Washington)
THE MODERN GIRL AND RACIAL RESPECTABILITY IN 1930s SOUTH AFRICA

18 April: Michael Ralph (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
LES LIONNES REVENT DU MONDE: BASKETBALL AND POST-NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN POSTCOLONIAL SENEGAL

2 May: Gretchen Pfeil (Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Chicago)

BOYS AND BIRDS: FAMILY AND CHARITY IN SUFI MUSLIM PRACTICE IN DAKAR, SENEGAL

16 May: Nancy Rose Hunt (History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
VIOLENCE AND VISUAL DEBRIS, DREAM IMAGES AND LAUGHTER: A RETHINKING OF BELGIAN COLONIAL HISTORY

23 May: Brian Larkin (Anthropology, Barnard College)
A RED LION SEMINAR*

MEDIATING THE QUR'AN. THE ELECTRIFICATION OF RELIGION IN NORTHERN NIGERIA

*Co-hosted with the Program of African Studies, Northwestern University.

 

30 May: Karen Morris (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
NEWS, CRISIS, AND 'LA CLASSE POLITIQUE': (RE)PRODUCING PUBLIC CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY COTE D'IVOIRE

 

2006 Winter Quarter

10 January: Jennifer Cole (Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago)

FASHIONING DISTINCTION IN URBAN MADAGASCAR: YOUTH, CONSUMERISM AND CLASS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION

24 January: Ccile Vigouroux (Linguistics, University of Chicago/Universit de Paris X/Nanterre)

VOICES FROM THE SOUTH: THE INTERSECTION OF GLOBALIZATION AND LA FRANCOPHONIE IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

 

31 January: William Kentridge

Special Event: Contemporary Art and Politics in Africa: A Discussion with William Kentridge

 

7 February: Vicki Brennan (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

FOGO OLORUN HAN (SHOW THE GLORY OF GOD): PRODUCING PARADISE THROUGH CHERUBIM AND SERAPHIM WORSHIP

*Co-hosted with the Interdisciplinary Christianities Workshop.

 

21 February: Jessica Levin (Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History, University of Chicago)
FLESH AND BONES: FANG RELIQUARY ART AND VIEWER RESPONSE



28 February: Rmy Bazenguissa-Ganga (Centre d'tudes Africaines/France)

ELECTORAL WARS IN AFRICA: PERSPECTIVES FROM CONGO-BRAZAVILLE


7 March: Kelly Gillespie (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

MORALIZING SECURITY: 'CORRECTIONS' AND THE POST-APARTHEID PRISON

 

2005 Fall Quarter

4 October: Jeffrey Kahn (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

MERMAIDS AND OTHER HOT COMMODITIES: TRAFFICKING SPIRITS ON THE BIGHT OF BENIN
Location: Home of Professor Ralph Austen (please email the coordinator for directions)

 

18 October: Koen Vlassenroot (University of Ghent/Belgium)

A RED LION SEMINAR:

CONFLICT, MILITIA FORMATION AND YOUTH IN EASTERN CONGO
Location: Uncommon Ground, 3800 N. Clark St. , Chicago , IL 60613 .

*Co-hosted with the Program of African Studies, Northwestern University.

 

25 October: Suzanne Wint (Music, University of Chicago)

Composing Hybridity: Ugandan Subjectivity and Western Art-Style Music
Co-hosted with EthNoise! The Ethnomusicology Workshop

 

15 November: Jeremy Jones (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

"Futureless Youth": The Everyday Constructions of Temporality in a Zimbabwean Township
Discussant: Gretchen Pfeil (Ph.D. student, Anthropology & Linguistics)

 

22 November: Kelly Gillespie (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

Deontic Prisons and Elephantine Optimism

29 November: Betsey Brada (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

The Right Drugs in the Right Bodies: Citizenship, National Security and AIDS Treatment in Botswana

Co-hosted with the Science, Technology, Society, and the State Workshop.

 

2004 Winter Quarter

13 January: Ralph Austen ( University of Chicago, History)
   

17 January: Stephen Hill (Music, Northwestern University)
   

17 February: Julien Bonhomme (Anthropology, Visiting Scholar)
   

24 February: Habu Mohammed (Political Science, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University)
   
Transition from Civilian Rule and the Reemergence of Traditional Politics in Nigeria

 

3 March: Salikoko Mufwene (Linguistics, University of Chicago)
   

2003 Winter Quarter

21 January: Michael Ralph
   
Pastime Paradise: The work of play for youth in Dakar today

4 February: Solofo Randrianja
   
Ethnicit Madagascar: Les Marofotsy la conquete de la libert vers 1820

11 February: Jesse Shipley
   
You Will Receive Your Miracle Today: New 'Charismatic' Christianity and Ideologies of the Free Market

25 February: Stephen Ellis
   
The historical study of witchcraft in Africa and Europe : problems and promises of method

11 March: Jan Blommaert
   
TBA

13 March: Francis Nyamnjoh
   
TBA

 

2001 Spring Quarter

27 March: Thomas Blom Hansen, University of Edinburgh
   
In Search of the Diasporic Self: Bollywood in South Africa

17 April: Gaurav Desai, Tulane University
   
Subject to Colonialism: African Self-fashioning and the Colonial Library
    (RED LION SEMINAR: 6pm, 2446 North Lincoln Avenue)

24 April: Benoit de l'Estoile, University of Paris
   
From the Colonial Exposition to the Museum of Man

15 May: Lee Skjon, University of Chicago (Anthropology, Linguistics)
   
The Vanguardist Imperative, State-ment of Nation, and Language Question in Mozambique's
    Sociedade Nova, 1975-1985



2001 Winter Quarter

16 January: Hylton White, University of Chicago (Anthropology)
   
Times and Mores: Family Values and the Possessions of a Post-Apartheid Countryside

30 January: Loren Kruger, University of Chicago (English)
   
Black Atlantics, white Indians, and Jews: locations, locutions, and syncretic identities in the fiction of
    Achmat Dangor and others

20 February: Andrew Apter, University of Chicago (Anthropology)
   
On Imperial Spectacle: the Dialectics of Seeing in Colonial Nigeria

6 March: Gracia Clark, Indiana University
   
Market Association Leaders' Strategic Use of Language and Narrative in Market Disputes and
    Negotiations in Kumasi, Ghana


 2000 Autumn Quarter

3 October: Mikael Karlstrom, University of Chicago (Anthropology, College)
   
The Imaginary of the State and the Politics of Indigestion: Rethinking Mbembe's 'Banality of     Power'

12 October: Poetry Reading by Ingrid de Kok, University of Capetown
   
(co-sponsored with the Millennium Poetry Series, Classics 10, 5:30 pm)

17 October: Jesse Shipley, University of Chicago (Anthropology)
   
Notes on The National Theatre of Ghana and the Neoliberal Moment

24 October: Solomon Nkiwane, University of Zimbabwe
   
The 2000 Parliamentary Election in Zimbabwe and Democracy in Africa (no pre-circulated paper)

7 November: Brett O'Bannon, Indiana University
   
Power and Resources in Herder-Farmer Conflict: Problems for Governance under Neo-liberal
    Reform in Rural Senegal

28 November: Alcinda Honwana, United Nations/University of Capetown
   
Children of War: Understanding War and War Cleansing in Mozambique and Angola

4 December: Gerald West, University of Natal
   
Negotiating with 'the White Man's Book': early foundations for liberation hermeneutics
    in Southern Africa

2000 Spring Quarter

4 April: David Dargie, University of Fort Hare (South Africa)
   
Performance/Discussion of Thembu-Xhosa Music

11 April: Buchi Emecheta (Respondent: Misty Bastian)
   
(RED LION SEMINAR with the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University)

18 April: Steffen Jensen, University of Roskilde and the Center for Development Research (Denmark)
   
The Impossibility of Community: Township Politics on the Cape Flats

25 April: Nicole Castor, Anthropology, University of Chicago
   
Orisha Online: Identity and Communication in the Black Atlantic

9 May: Michael Dietler, Anthropology, University of Chicago
   
Digesting the Feast: Rituals of Consumption, Commensal Politics, and Power in African   Contexts

23 May: Kathryn Geurts, Human Development, University of Chicago
   
Cultural Categories and the Anthropology of the Senses: Notes on an Anlo-Ewe Theory of Inner States

30 May: Cosmis Magaya and Paul Berliner (Northwestern University)
    (Concert and discussion; joint meeting with EthNoise! in Goodspeed 402 at 5-7pm)

2000 Winter Quarter

11 January: Ralph Austen, History, University of Chicago
   
Reading Colonial Autobiography: Amadou Hampate Ba, Amkoullel: l'enfant peule, from a colonial to a
    postcolonial voice

25 January: Alma Gottlieb, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
   
Stranger Anxiety or Stranger Love? Sociable Beng Babies (Cote d'Ivoire)

8 February: Simon Hawkins, Anthropology, University of Chicago
   
The Ideology of Foreign Language Learning in Tunisia

22 February: William Reno, Northwestern University
   
Stealing Like a Bandit, Stealing Like a State

29 February: Jennifer Spruill, Anthropology, University of Chicago
   
Street Rituals: Pride and Matrimony in the Post-Apartheid Nation

14 March: Steven Pierce, Yale University/University of Michigan
   
Traditional Politics and the Politics of Tradition: The Search for Signs of "Modernity" in Nationalist
    Northern Nigeria

1999 Autumn Quarter

5 October: Mamadou Diouf, Codesria and University of Michigan
   
Urban Youth and Urban Culture in Contemporary Senegal (no pre-circulated paper)

19 October: Kelly Gillespie, Anthropology, University of Chicago
   
Video Presentation: Thick Skins: A Conversation with Two Young South African Prisoners

2 November: Anne-Maria Makhulu, Anthropology, University of Chicago
   
Landscapes of Repression and Revolution: South African Town Planning and its Legacy

16 November: Richard Werbner, University of Manchester
   
Bringing Back the Dead in Botswana: Patriarchy and Elderhood Revisited

 

1999 Spring Quarter

6 April: Jeremy Rich, Indiana University
   
Bewitching Boycotts: Mpongwe Clan Chiefs, Sorcery and Political Power in Colonial Libreville,
    1869-1920

13 April: Neil Roos, University of the Northwest (South Africa)
   
Homes Fit for (White) Heroes: Servicemen, Social Justice and the Making of Apartheid, 1939-1948

27 April: Bill Murphy, Northwestern University
   
Stylistics of Power among Child Soldiers in the Liberian and Sierra Leonean Civil Wars

11 May: Paul Kollman, University of Chicago
   
Comparing Civilizing Processes: Slave Evangelization in 19th Century East Africa

18 May: Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Cheik Anta Diop University and Northwestern University
   
The Right to Judge: The Debate on Excision in France and Senegal
   
RED LION SEMINAR with Northwestern University's Program of African Studies

25 May: Beth Anne Buggenhagen, University of Chicago
   
Body into Soul, Soul into Spirit: The Commodification of Religious Value in the Mouride
   
Tariqa of  Senegal . The Case of Da'ira-Tuba Chicago .
    

1999 Winter Quarter

19 January: Neville Hoad, University of Chicago
   
Representing "African" "Sodomy" in the Missionary Position: Corporeal Intimacies and their
    Signifying Regimes

2 February: Roderick Coover, Art Institute of Chicago
    The Rhetorics of Montage in the Representation of Cultures: Notes on an
    Ethnography of Performance in Ghana of the 1990s

16 February: Kirk Hoppe, University of Illinois (Chicago)
    Lords of the Fly: Constructions of Knowledge and Landscape during Sleeping Sickness
    Resettlement in British Colonial Tanganyika

2 March: Jean-Herve Jezequel, EHESS (University of Chicago, 1999)
    Producing an 'Aristocratic Discourse of the Nation' in Colonial French Sudan: Study of a
    Historical Non-Object?

1998 Autumn Quarter

13 October: Jean and John Comaroff (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
    Policing the Occult in the Post-Colony

27 October: Lesley Stern (Getty Museum)
    Great Zimbabwe: Metaphors of Stone

3 November: Bruce Berman (Political Studies, Queens University)
    Moral Ethnicity, Political Tribalism and State-Society Relations in Africa

17 November: Hylton White (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
    Ritual Hegemonies: A Moral Politics in the Zulu Countryside

8 December: David Bunn (English, University of the Western Cape)
    Waterhole Work: Drought, Photography, and Politics in the Kruger National Park, 1926-1950

 

 

 

For special assistance in attending or other questions, please contact the Coordinator:

Suzanne Wint (swint@uchicago.edu)