| Prof. Dr. Rose Marie Beck |
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Professor of African Languages and Literatures - Member of Steering Committee Point Sud Frankfurt/Bamako E-Mail: rmbeck[at]uni-leipzig.de Prof. Dr. Rose Marie Beck, *1964, studied African Studies, German Studies, Education and History at the University of Cologne. M.A. 1993 with a textlinguistic analysis of popular music from Nairobi. 2000 she completed her Ph.D. thesis with a topic from Swahili everyday culture, i.e. the communicative uses of the wrap cloth leso (or kanga) (Beck 2001). 1998 to 2009 at the Institute of African Linguistics at Goethe University Frankfurt, first as a lecturer for Swahili language, later as senior researcher in the research project "Language, Gender, Sustainability“, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation in the program "Key Issues of the Humanities" from 2003 to 2007. 2008 Habilitation at Goethe University Frankfurt on "doing development", observed through talk-in-interaction in a grassroots development organisation in Namibia (Herero) (Beck 2011). In 2010 she won the "KfW-Förderpreis 2010 für praxisrelevante Entwicklungsforschung in the category "Exzellenzpreis" for a critical article on HIV/AIDS prevention (Beck 2009a). Two children, born 1993 and 2000. Since 1 September 2010 Professor for African Languages and Literatures at the University of Leipzig. I am a sociolinguist with a focus in the sociology of language through the lens of interaction studies, ethnomethodology and the sociology of knowledge in the fields of urban studies, HIV/AIDS, popular culture, performance, philosophy of language. I have some expertise in Eastern and Southwestern Africa, linguistically with Swahili and Herero. I became interested in Africa and especially knowledge about Africa during a student's exchange stay in Mombasa in 1981, where I went to the H.H. the Aga Khan High School and stayed with a Digo family for one year. I kept returning to Mombasa in 1985, 1992, and later with my then baby daughter for my field research for my Ph.D. thesis in 1994 – 1995 and 1996. From 2002 to 2007 I worked on community based organisations (CBOs) in the Communal Area Omatjete and especially in the village of Omutiuanduko. Currently I plan to return to Mombasa in the context of a comparative research project on Mombasa and Accra (with H. Berking, TU Darmstadt). One of my main theoretical concerns is the question how we can reconstrut local orders of knowledge: How is the world constituted through social action of African actors? How is our (fragmented?) world made to look coherent and how is sense produced? How can we transcend our own logics of knowledge and understand things in ways which may be unexpected but precisely for their unexpectedness unmask our own assumptions, presuppositions and beliefs and their preconditions. I find that the reconstruction of social action through an interactional and ethnomethodological approach is surprisingly successful in this regard. Selected Publications. 2012. Stadtsprachen in Afrika. in Thomas Bierschenk & Eva Spies (eds.), 50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit in Afrika - Kontinuitäten, Brüche, Perspektiven. Köln: Köppe. (in press). 2011a. Bridging the language
gap. Approaches to Herero Verbal Interaction as Development Practice in Namibia.
Köln: Köppe. 2011b.
Über die sprachtheoretische Konstitution von Wissensordnungen, in
Nikolaus Schareike, Eva Spies & Pierre-Yves Le Meur (Hg.). Auf dem Boden der Tatsachen. Festschrift für Thomas Bierschenk. (Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung 28). Köln: Köppe. 2010. Urban Languages in Africa. Africa Spectrum 45, 3: 11-41. 2009b. Women, language, and innovation: creative interpretations of gendered speech prohibitions in Africa, Discourse & Society 20,5: 531–553. 2009. Tessa S. Lennemann, Rose Marie Beck, Christoph Königs, Holger Pfister, Gabriele Nisius, Mira Gruber, Lena Kroeker, Reinhard Brodt.. Preparing for the long run - Ein Wochenendseminar über HIV Therapie und Prävention für internationale Ärzte der nächsten Generation, Poster presented at and published with 1. Deutsch-Österreichisch-Schweizerischer AIDS Kongress (SÖDAK), St. Gallen, 24-27 June 2009. 2007a. Approches théoriques du genre, de la langue et de l’innovation: interprétations créatives des tabous langagiers, Stratégies féminines de survie en temps de crise. Dynamiques du genre en pays toura, hg. v. Thomas Bearth. Abidjan: Editions Livres Sud (Edilis), pp 99-130. 2007b. Soziale Sicherheit als kommunikative Praxis: der Wickelstoff kanga in Ostafrika, Afrika im Wandel, hg. v. Thomas Bearth, Barbara Becker, Rolf Kappel, Gesine Krüger, Roger Pfister. (Zürcher Hochschulforum, Bd. 40). Zürich: vdf Verlag. 2006a. Popular Media for HIV/AIDS Prevention? Comparing Two Comics: Kingo and the Sara Communication Initiative, Journal of Modern African Studies 44,4: 513 – 541. 2006b. “We speak Otjiherero but we write in English”, ‘Doing Elite’ at the Grassroots (Herero, Namibia), in Along the Routes to Power: Explorations of the Empowerment through Language, hg. v. Martin Pütz, Joshua Fishman, JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer. New York, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. S. 305-332. 2004. & Frank Wittmann. (Hg.). African Media Cultures. Transdisciplinary Perspectives – Cultures de Médias en Afrique. Perspectives Transdisciplinaires. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. 2001. Texte auf Textilien in Ostafrika. Sprichwörtlichkeit als Eigenschaft ambiger Kommunikation. (Wortkunst und Dokumentartexte in afrikanischen Sprachen 11). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. [Dissertation]. |
