AUGUSTA – Bates College anthropology professor Elizabeth Eames,Ph.D., will give a talk about African issues and culture on at 7 p.m.,  Monday, May 11, in the first event in Lithgow Public Library’s annual community reading project, A Capital Read 2015. The program, “Teaching African Studies in a Eurocentric World: Tales from the Trenches,” will take place at the Holocaust and Human Rights Center at the University of Maine at Augusta. It is free and open to the public.

The community is invited to read two books by acclaimed travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux for A Capital Read 2015. The novel “The Lower River” and nonfiction title “The Last Train to Zona Verde” both focus on the African continent and share similar themes, which will be explored in Eames’ talk.

Eames is associate professor of anthropology at Bates College, where she teaches courses in contemporary Africa, economic anthropology, comparative gender relations, and cinema studies. She has served as chair of the Bates Department of Anthropology and the programs in women and gender studies, and African American studies.

Eames received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University and her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. A book based upon her fieldwork among the Yoruba, “The Politics of Wealth in Southwestern Nigeria: Why Ondo’s Women Went to War,” was published by Mellen Press in 2013. She is currently engaged in research with Somali immigrants in Maine, and is a proud resident of Lewiston’s downtown.