Anita Cherise Wheeler is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Professor in the Global Studies Interdepartmental Program and the African Studies Center. She received her Ph.D. in African Studies from Howard University in Washington, DC. Her current book project, Navigating Difference: Africa and China’s Cultural and Political Geographies, comparatively examines the local, national and transnational narratives on the opportunities, challenges and ambiguities of South-South cooperation. From formal networks of diplomacy on a global scale to interpersonal encounters on a local scale, exchanges by way of small businesses, online forums, popular music, migration, language instruction and literature constitutes mutable spaces of interaction and intervention. Her previous work focused on China’s public diplomacy and Mandarin language instruction in Kenya. In Winter 2013, she will teach a course in the Global Studies IDP on Sino-African contemporary relations with a particular focus on how culture within a transnational context influences both diplomacy and domestic policymaking. For the Spring 2013 quarter, she will teach a course on the role of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in reconfiguring the global economic and political order.
