Instructor: Donald Wright

Donald Wright
 Biography: DONALD WRIGHT, Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, Emeritus, SUNY-Cortland, has written books on African, African American, and Atlantic history.  He has held Fulbright, NEH, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships and has lectured in universities on four continents.

Classes by this instructor


(HIS140) FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, GAMBIA, AND THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS

(HIS140) FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, GAMBIA, AND THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS

This is an OLLI Digital Library recording and is available to view until December 31, 2025.

In January 1943, on his way to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt stopped through Britain's West African colony of Gambia. The poverty and ill health he witnessed in "that hell-hole of yours" (as he referred to Gambia, speaking to Churchill) prompted Roosevelt to consider "an organization of United Nations".
Sunday, August 31, 2025, OLLI Digital Library

(IST101) WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE WHERE NO TRIBES IN AFRICA?

(IST101) WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE WHERE NO TRIBES IN AFRICA?

This is an OLLI Digital Libraryrecording and is available to view until December 31, 2025.

Don Wright will discuss the difficulties he, as a person from a Western culture, faced when initially studying the history of precolonial Africa, and then teaching it to students who carried the same Western notions about such things as borders, boundaries, and personal identity. And he will include, as he puts it, "some related stuff that I find interesting."


Sunday, August 31, 2025, OLLI Digital Library