Fulbright Scholar Konrad Tuchscherer, Ph.D., Director of External Scholarships and Fellowships, and Associate Professor, Department of History, has been in Sierra Leone this academic year conducting research on the Mende Kikakui script and literate tradition, as well as on early 19th-century shipboard uprisings among captives during the Atlantic slave trade.
“It has been exciting to be here,” he said. Dr. Tuchscherer is affiliated in Sierra Leone with Njala University’s Institute of Languages and Cultural Studies, where he is also collaborating with graduate students on projects involving language and cultural preservation.
He is working with scribes in their 80s and 90s who use the script, as well as with teachers who want to bring the script into their classrooms. The script, which linguists call a syllabary, was devised around 1917. The name, Kikakui, was derived from its first three characters: ki-ka-ku. It has approximately 195 characters and is written from right to left, like Arabic.
“Dr. Tuchscherer is the only scholar who has worked on the Mende Kikakui script tradition, which is vanishing,” explained Saidu Challay, Ph.D., Dean, Njala University. “Scholars have called this script one of the three most important scripts on the African continent.”
Claude Dimoh, Professor and Director of Njala’s University’s Institute of Languages and Cultural Studies, added, “He is working with our faculty and students to teach them how to teach Kikakui. He is the only person who can do this work.”
Dr. Tuchscherer is also working together with Philip Misevich, Ph.D., Graduate Coordinator and Associate Professor, Department of History, St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Harvard scholar Marial Iglesias Utset, Ph.D., on a project on slave trader Théodore Canot who operated in the vicinity of Sierra Leone during the era of the slave trade.
Dr. Tuchscherer has also continued research that follows up on the documentary film he co-produced with Dr. Misevich, Ghosts of Amistad, the 2016 winner of the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award. “In that film, we searched for the home of the epic hero, Sengbe, known in the US as ‘Cinque,’” Dr. Tuchscherer said. “Despite those efforts, we were not able to find it. But we eventually did locate the precise location and now conduct research there. This new information offers a glimpse into the world of one of Sierra Leone’s greatest heroes. The research has been exciting because it has involved students and lecturers here, and has energized communities that are interested in safeguarding cultural patrimony.”
He recently traveled to the remote Plantain Island, located off the coast of Sierra Leone, where many captives were put on boats for enslavement in the new world. “The island is definitely off the beaten track today, but it is historically important because of the slave trade,” he said. “In fact, the island is allegedly the place where slave trader John Newtown wrote ‘Amazing Grace.’”
Fulbright Opportunities and Application Processes Information Session
Thursday, February 16
2 to 3:15 p.m.
Fulbright alumni include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize recipients, and 78 MacArthur Fellows. Tuchscherer is one of 53 Fulbright Scholars selected for Africa. He will lead a virtual information session for faculty, administrators, and staff, “Fulbright Opportunities and Application Processes,” with Zoe Petropoulou, Ph.D., Associate Professor of French, Department of Languages and Literatures.