Roger Howell Jr. Professor of History David Gordon discusses his interpretation of the African legend “the Lunda love story” as a peace treaty of sorts, along with his research using art and oral tradition and archival sources to explore nineteenth-century political transformations in the central African interior. In the course of the conversation, he talks about the reason African art can be found in Portuguese museums and tells the story of a statue that goes missing in the 1970s right from its display case. Gordon, who teaches history, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and his PhD at Princeton.