Mahir Saul (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Submitted: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 11:20:22 -0600 (CST)


Mahir Saul
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Mail address:
607 South Mathews Avenue
Urbana, Illinois  61801  USA

Social anthropologist, conducted fieldwork in Burkina Faso, among the
Moose (Mossi) and since 1983 among the Bobo.  Thematic interests include,
economic organization, households, kinship, Islam, Christian missionaries,
and local cults and worldview.

In the past five years I have been involved in a broad synthesis of
precolonial regional political organization in the Muhun-Bani region,
which includes western Burkina Faso, eastern Mali, and northern Cote
d'Ivoire, and of the shaping of colonial social system under diverse
influences including this precolonial past.

Part of this interest in social history is focused on the history of the
environment, developed in a collaborative four year project funded by the
MacArthur Foundation.  Conducted archival work in France 
(Aix-en-Provence), Ouagadougou (CNRST), Bobo-Dioulasso, Rome (Archives of
the White Fathers), and Cote d'Ivoire (Abidjan) on the colonial period.

I have a broader interest in Francophone West Africa, in the colonial
French West African literature, and I also teach general courses on
Africa. I have worked in development oriented research projects, and have
tought at Yale (1991-92)  and had a sabbatical year appointment in France,
at the Laboratoire ERMES in Orleans.