Curriculum Vitae

Coastal cities of east Africa have long been nodes of cultural convergence and diaspora, connecting African and the Indian Ocean cultures. However, during the nineteenth century new avenues of interculturation gained primacy through transformations brought about by the globalizing world market. In turn, the architectural spaces of coastal city life were completely transformed and reshaped as cities, such as Zanzibar and Mombasa, became the site of intense social and political contestation. Meier's project will analyze the local assertion of old and emergence of new architectural styles and spatial practices in connection to the multidirectional circulation of international aesthetic forms and architectural technologies during this period (circa 1870-1914). By focusing on the reinvention of architectural space and meaning precisely at this moment, the project seeks illuminate the starting flexibility by which urban residents accessed new and old cultural circuits and practices in an attempt to affirm indigenous conceptions of cosmopolitanism, religiosity and identity.

Prita Meier is an Africanist art historian, with a particular interest in the reciprocities between African, Indian Ocean and North Atlantic worlds during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Her current project focuses on the urban arts and architectures of coastal east Africa. She was a Mellon Postdoctural Fellow in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University (2007-2009), having completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2007. Selected publications include: “Building Global But Meaning Local: Reading Sultan Barghash’s Politics of Architecture,” /ZIFF Journal./ Guest Editor: Abdul Sheriff, University of Dar es Salaam (2005); “Veil: Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art,” /African Arts, /book review (Summer 2004);  “Per/Forming African Identities: Sidi Communities and the ‘Transnational Moment,’” /Sidis and Scholars: Essays on African Indians/. Red Sea Press. Editor: Edward Alpers, UCLA. (2004); “Territorial Struggles: Cairo and Contemporary Art,” /Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art /(Spring/Summer 2003); “An/Sichten: Malerei aus dem Kongo, 1990-2000,” /African Arts/, book review (Spring 2003)

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