The first professor with whom I ever danced was Edris Makward. It was a good introduction to a man, an intellectual father who fashioned and changed my life.
I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin in early September 1969. I went straight away to the UW Health Center, where I learned that I was allergic to penicillin and, as fate would have it, I bumped into Alphonse Tekpetey, a Ghanaian graduate student in the Department of African Languages and Literature. Alphonse invited me to a party that evening at the “Afro-American” house where he introduced me to his mentor, Edris Makward who would become my mentor too. Edris asked me to dance, and I said “yes”!
That’s all I remember of this first encounter. I was enrolled in the Department of Frenchand Italian and soon enough found myself in Edris’s class where we took up the Francophone literature of West Africa. It was there that I encountered Sundiata, ou l’épopée mandingue (1960), transcribed and translated by Djibril Tamsir Niane from a performance of the epic by Mamadou Kouyaté. I was likewise enchanted by Birago Diop’s neo-traditional retelling of West African tales in Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba (1947), including the unforgettable poem, “Souffles.” Ferdinand Oyono’s emphatically anti-colonial novel, Une vie de boy (1956) was also on the agenda, as was Léopold Sédar Senghor’s 1948 Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache with “Orphée Noir,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Senghor’s anthology and to la négritude. I must surely have produced a term paper for that class, but what I remember was struggling with Sartre’s text that I had been assigned to present to the class. There was so much history, so many complex philosophical and political issues subtending Sartre’s argument that the task was monumental. I knew it would not be a superb presentation, but I did my best and Edris did not complain…
Until then, my literary diet had been 16 th century French sonnets and 18 th century French political and philosophical texts with which I came to terms and even enjoyed. But I fell in love with the texts from Africa: there was an immediacy, intensity, and urgency that bespoke the importance of these texts. From time to time, African writers we studied, like Sembène Ousmane, came to campus and to our classes. We could ask them questions: Why this title? Why this ending? I left Edris’s class with a sense of the depth, breadth and necessity of this literature.
However, Edris’s mode of “teaching Africa” exceeded the classroom and strictly intellectual territory. As I recall, the profs in the department of African Languages and Literatures gave parties and feasts, welcoming such visitors and us students. At such events, Edris, for example, would prepare a Senegalese yassa or a Moroccan méchoui, and couscous. I remember one occasion when Edris and his family hosted the marriage celebration for an African Studies student.
Edris himself was personal, full of charm and generosity. He took part in life beyond the classroom and his home: he attended my wedding in Madison and welcomed my parents who, years later, would welcome him and eventually his friends Pathé Diagneand Fatou Sow to stay at our home in New Orleans. As co-director of my thesis on Birago Diop’s Contes d’Amadou Koumba, Nouveaux Contes d’Amadou Koumba, et Contes et Lavanes, Edris, with the support of Birago’s tales, opened the world of Senegal and West Africa to me. In 1975, he wrote to Fatou Sow and asked her to pick me up from the airport, which she did. Moreover, Fatou put me up at her parents’ home in downtown Dakar for the duration of my dissertation research trip. Edris also wrote to Birago Diop, thanks to whom I managed to attend oral performances. Birago also invited me to visit his veterinary clinic where I learned still more about his sub-Saharan travels and experiences that provided the settings for many of his tales. He hosted me for lunch and dinner, and subsequently we kept our relationship alive, exchanging letters for umpteen years. On my every visit thereafter, he welcomed me. Ultimately, he gave me his copies of Awa, la revue de la femme noire and handwritten manuscripts of several of his tales. In spring 1989, I saw Birago for the last time. He said: “Hurry back. I won’t be around much longer.” And when I returned later that year, he had passed.
Apparently, Edris thought of his mission as “introducing Africans to Americans and Americans to Africans.” And this, he accomplished in every instance. In the early 70’s, he helped initiate a student exchange program between UW Madison and Gaston Berger University in St. Louis, Senegal. It was he who hosted the African Literature Association’s first annual meeting on the continent: Senegal in 1989, and then a subsequent meeting in Morocco in 1999. Edris had family in both countries: his mother was Senegalese, from St. Louis, and his father was Moroccan, from Fez. Surely, the spirit of hospitality which was fundamental in both cultures enabled him to develop an extraordinary sensibility, allowing him to pull off these enormous and complex projects. A humanist, a believer, Edris had what has always seemed to me to be infinite faith and optimism that difficult projects could and would work out. He had a firm will and exceptional capacity to resolve tensions, arguments, and disagreements. He was a gifted mediator and negotiator by virtue of his faith, generosity and charm.
Thanks to Edris, there remains a particularly memorable moment in the history of the ALA. In 1987, our annual meeting took place at Cornell University. There were two candidates for president: Edris and Professor Mildred Hill-Lubin of the University of Florida at Gainesville. Astonishingly, the vote was tied. The ALA which became active in 1975 had never had a woman at the helm in its twelve-year history. Edris rose to the occasion and conceded. Everyone stood up, applauding loudly, cheering euphorically, endlessly---as much for Edris’s gesture as for Mildred herself! The hall was ecstatic!
Edris would eventually become president, according to ALA records, in 1994. Meanwhile, in fall semester 1992 when I had just settled into a new position at Indiana University Bloomington, I received a call from Edris, a founding member of the West African Research Association(WARA), whose objective was to encourage and support research projects and exchanges between West African and American scholars and students. Edris called to ask that I apply for a Fulbright scholarship that would ultimately enable me to set up the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar. I balked! “Edris, I just got here. The administration is going to say, ‘What? She just arrived and she’s leaving already!?’” He tried to reassure me: “No, they won’t!” We argued … but in the final analysis, I gave in: I had always wanted to live in Dakar, to improve my Wolof, to learn more about Senegal, and here was a critical opportunity that might make a difference not only for me, but for others. I recall Pathé Diagne, saying to me at the time, “If you manage to start up this research center, it will be more important than your next article!” We laughed but how right he was. The following year, off I went to Dakar for what turned out to be a multi-year position, that was one of the most transformative and enriching experiences of my life.
I called Edris in Seattle some days before he died. I suspected he had not heard that his Gambian compatriot Mbaye Cham had passed. Mbaye and I had been Edris’s advisees during our years at Wisconsin. I called to let Edris know. I told him a little about what I’d been doing as well… He listened. Then, with a bit of anxiety, I dared to ask if he was still swimming, as he had done routinely for so many years. This was for me a yardstick. He replied simply that no, he was no longer swimming. It was then that I knew he was in decline. Yet, I could still hear his smile and his warmth.…
Eileen Julien -- with thanks to Debra Boyd, Janis Mayes, Micheline Rice-Maximin, and Sandra Zagarell
Bloomington
October 2025