Centre News

Michigan State University’s Professor Peter Alegi will
give the lecture “From Marginalization to Global
Citizenship: Africa’s First World Cup in Historical
Perspective” on Thursday, April 28. The event will begin
at 7:30 p.m. in the Norton Center’s Newlin Hall.

In a review of Alegi’s African Soccerscapes: How a
Continent Changed the World’s Game, the Financial
Times says that “nobody understands the background
to African soccer better than...Peter Alegi. This World
Cup is his moment.”

For this year’s Roy Ray Lecture, Peter Alegi, associate professor of history at Michigan State University, will visit Centre College to lead the convocation “From Marginalization to Global Citizenship: Africa’s First World Cup in Historical Perspective.”

The event, which will be held on Thursday, April 28, at 7:30 p.m. in Newlin Hall of the College’s Norton Center for the Arts, is free and open to the public.

In his lecture, Alegi will discuss the ways in which South Africa’s successful but not unproblematic hosting of the 2010 World Cup represents the latest and most ambitious attempt by an African nation to showcase its recent political achievements, generate business and assert the continent’s global citizenship.

Alegi, who has spent much time researching and writing about soccer in Africa, is the author of two books on the subject: African Soccerscapes: How a Continent Changed the World’s Game and Laduma!: Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa, from Its Origins to 2010.

In a review of African Soccerscapes, Gerard Akindes, cofounder of Impumelelo, an interdisciplinary journal of African sports, says that “Alegi’s brilliant and rich exploration of the history of football in Africa is long overdue and fills an enormous gap.” And a Financial Times review of the book reports that “nobody understands the background to African soccer better than the Italian-American historian Peter Alegi. This World Cup is his moment. His African Soccerscapes crams daunting erudition, gleaned over many years of study of African football, into under 200 pages of history.”

Alegi was a 2010 Fulbright Scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He has appeared on NPR, BBC, France24, Radio France International, Radio Democracy (in Senegal), China Radio International and TBSeFM (in South Korea).

Among the many publications featuring interviews with Alegi are the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Le Monde, Liberation, Il Messaggero, El Siglo de Europa and Veja.

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