(Posted March 14, 2005)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Emil Nagengast, associate professor of politics at Juniata College, will talk on "Saving Africa" as part of the Bookend Seminar lecture series at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 23 in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science.

The talk is free and open to the public. The talk is part of the Bookend Seminar series, which features afternoon lectures each month by Juniata College faculty.

Nagengast, who traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last spring to research the history of the newly created African Union (at the group's headquarters), will review the structure and history of the African Union. He also will present several viewpoints on whether the group will be able to save Africa from a future of continued violence and poverty.

Nagengast will explain how many Africans hope the African Union can break patterns of economic decline, ethnic violence and political corruption by setting clear standards for "good governance" for every country on the continent. Nagengast will show how the African Union has used the European Union as a model for their multilateral approach.

Nagengast joined Juniata's faculty in 1996 as an assistant professor of political science. He earned a bachelor's degree in German and political science from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Conn. He went on to earn a master's degree in political science from the University of Kansas and a doctorate in the same field from the University of Pittsburgh.

He also attended Karl Marx Universitat in Leipzig, East Germany; Middlebury College Summer Russian Language Institute; Krasnodar Russian Language Institute in the USSR; and Johannes Gutenberg Universitat in Mainz, West Germany.

His professional experience includes teaching fellowships, assistantships, and undergraduate advising at the University of Pittsburgh. He was also a teaching fellow at the University of Kansas and an instructor at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for International Studies. He was the 1999/2000 recipient of the Beachley Junior Faculty Award at Juniata.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.