Ousman  M Kobo

Ousman Kobo

BA (Honors) City College of New York (1992); MA (International Relations), City College of New York (1995) and Ph.D. (History), University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005). Professor Kobo has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of African history at Marquette University and Gettysburg College before joining the History Department in 2006. Professor Kobo’s research and teaching interests include 20th century West African social and religious history as well as the social history of West African migrants in the United States. His dissertation, “Promoting the Good and Forbidding the Evil: A Comparative Historical Study of the Ahl-as-Sunna Islamic Reform Movements in Ghana and Burkina Faso, 1950-2000,” examines the ways religious reform engages modernity, secularism and cultural traditions in order to generate new conceptions of religious purity that takes into account human material progress. He is currently working on a book length manuscript titled, "Ambiguous Modernity: Islamic Reform in Ghana and Burkina Faso, 1950-2000." Kobo has received prestigious awards and grants to support his scholarly work including the MacArthur Fellowship for International Peace and the Boren Fellowship. He was also the co-recipient of the Distinguished Service Award awarded to two CCNY alumni during the College’s centennial celebration in 1997 for his service to the College.