History Commons^™

Thomas Brackett Reed, Civil Rights, And The Fight For Fair Elections, Wendy Hazard

Maine History

Few causes in American history have proved more enduring than the effort to ensure all citizens the right to vote. From the enfranchising of African-Americans after the Civil War to the granting of women’s suffrage and the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the country has struggled to live up to its image as the guardian of the ideal that every citizen has a guaranteed right to vote. The prolonged presidential election of 2000 and the vote-counting debacle in Florida once again focused national attention on the issue of enfranchisement. Democrats argued that the Florida election, whether by …

Tyler Johnson On Witness To The Truth: John H. Scott's Struggle For Human Rights In Louisiana By John Henry Scott With Cleo Scott Brown. Columbia: University South Carolina Press, 2003. 336pp., Tyler Johnson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Witness to the Truth: John H. Scott's Struggle for Human Rights in Louisiana by John Henry Scott with Cleo Scott Brown. Columbia: University South Carolina Press, 2003. 336pp.

Tyler Johnson On Sons Of Mississippi: A Story Of Race And Its Legacy By Paul Hendrickson. New York: Knopf, 2003. 368pp., Tyler Johnson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and its Legacy by Paul Hendrickson. New York: Knopf, 2003. 368pp.

Werewere Liking Et La Poétique Du Jeu Pour Libérer L'Imaginaire Postcolonial Africain, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay addresses the issue of poetics and political stakes in Werewere Liking's novel, Elle sera de jaspe et de corail. While this novel has been presented as illustrative of the Negro-African aesthetics rooted in orality, the present article argues that Liking's poetics of hybridity is a postcolonial strategy whose aim is the liberation of African imagination and creativity. The essay ends by suggesting some similarities between Liking's project and that of the Congolese philosopher, especially in his philosophical essay, L'Afrique va-t-elle mourir? Bouscu/er l'imaginaire africain. Through their works, Ka Mana and Werewere Liking are examining the conditions for a …

Lectures Mythophores Des Recits De L'Origine Dans N'Zid De Malika Mokeddem, Mireille Rosello

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In 1957, Barthes critiqued the omnipresence of imperialist myths. Is his study of the collusion between myths and colonialism still relevant today? Rather than looking for a new canon of postcolonial myths, Rosello proposes to distinguish between two critical stances: demystification and demythification. Rosello suggests that literature can afford to take the risk of mythification through a reading of a "mythoforic" novel: Malika Mokeddem's N'zid, a text that remythifies and demystifies the opposition between nomads and sedentaries.

Gommage Et Résistance Dans Le Processus De Mythification Postcoloniale, Robert Fotsing Mangoua

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Using the central figures of Um Nyobe and Patrice Lumumba, this paper aims to show that postcolonial mythology is a confrontation of two tendencies: on one hand, the colonial and postcolonial States, whose efforts tend to rub out history and its great faces, and on the other, artists and thinkers from Africa or abroad who want to establish the memory and the deeds of the missing as a source of inspiration for the present and next generation.

Mythologie Postcoloniale Française Ou La Quête Permanente Du Livre Rose De La Colonisation, Armelle Cressent

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article touches on four books about colonization, which were recently published in France and which are intended for wide readership. This article underlines how the authors maintain the myth of a "rather beautiful" French Colonization or/and how they tend to avoid a too brutal questioning of the French colonial past in their writings.

Subversion D'Un Mythe Colonial : Le« Grand Blanc De Lambaréné » Dans Le Roman Francophone D'Afrique, Sylvère Mbondobari

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Among its goals, this study aims to throw new light on the representation of the West in African Francophone literature. In this respect, it will examine some characteristic aspects of the image of the "Grand Blanc de Lambarene" - Albert Schweitzer - produced by the African imagination. For the first time, this paper shows which discursive and structural strategies are used by Sylvain Bemba and Seraphin Ndaot to represent Albert Schweitzer, to express their convictions, and how they confer a thematic or aesthetic aspect to their text. To be fully heuristic, the representation of Schweitzer requires that we reconstitute the …

Portrait: Les Nombreuses Facettes De Toussaint Louverture, Jean Metellus

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Toussaint Louverture's groundbreaking revolutionary war against slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue has earned him a well-deserved place in the history of anti-colonial movements. Despite his arrest and subsequent deportation to France, he is remembered as one of the founders of the first Haitian nation. Metellus goes beyond this image of the Haitian leader and captures him in all his complexity; his limits as a human being and as a leader. However, Metellus ultimately wants us to remember Toussaint Louverture as one of the founders of the anti­colonial movement.

Reviews: Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity And Race, Ethnicity, And Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers, Mechthild Nagel

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

When Male Becomes Female And Female Becomes Male In Mande., Kassim Kone

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper argues that an ideology of masculinity among the Bamana is based on the belief of supremacy of the male biological heritage over the female heritage in procreation. The statuses and roles of Bamana men and women remain culturally and contextually fluid however. Father to his own children, a man is also the male mother to his sister’s child. On the opposite, the paternal aunt is the female father to her brother’s child. A clear picture of the gender relations requires an understanding of women’s roles and their power and authority in their families of orientation. Similarly, male domination …

Arms Control, Mary Kennan Herbert

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Review: Gender, Development, And Globalization, Jennifer L. Mendel

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Invited And Invented Spaces Of Participation: Neoliberal Citizenship And Feminists' Expanded Notion Of Politics., Faranak Miraftab

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This short conceptual piece calls for a careful rethinking of what feminist scholars have articulated as an expanded notion of politics: the notion that rejects the binary constructs of formal/informal, and demonstrates the significance of community-based activism as an informal arena of politics and citizenship construction. Introducing the interacting and mutually constitutive concepts of “invited” and “invented” spaces of citizenship, this essay urges recognition of the full range of spaces within the informal arena where citizenship is practiced. It warns of the risk arising from the literature’s limited focus on strategies of survival: namely, the likelihood of a bifurcated conceptualization …

Djotaayi Dieguenye: The Gathering Of Women In Mariama Ba's Fictional World., Siga Fatima Jagne

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Mariama Bâ's fiction is situated in the tradition of the speakerly text—the oral tradition of the Senegalese griot women. This paper focuses on Bâ’s nuanced analysis of caste, friendship, fate, and women's relations. Bâ is critical of archaic and misogynist traditional practices and in her writing she expresses a hope for a positive construction of the Wolof world view.

From The Editor, Mechthild Nagel

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

En-Gendering Critical Spatial Literacy: Migrant Asante Women And The Politics Of Urban Space., Epifania Adoo-Adare

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The power of spatial configurations in our everyday social practices and ideological constructions of place and identity cannot be denied. As an architect and an Asante woman who has always lived in African and diasporic cities, I am particularly interested in how Black women’s socioeconomic lives have been constituted, situated, and enacted in western urban spatiality. I believe that Black women the world over are disproportionately represented in unsuitable and inadequate urban spaces and are also underrepresented in urban development decision-making processes. Also, as a Black female architect intent on imagining and constructing radical architectural counter-narratives within hegemonic spatial politics, …

A Requiem For Voicelessness: Pakistanis And Muslims In The Us., Asma Barlas

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In this essay, I discuss the attack on the civil liberties of Muslims, some challenges I face as a Muslim-Pakistani-American in the present political milieu, and the psychology of racism. This was delivered as a 15-minute talk and is in the nature of some reflections and not a systematic analysis.

Review: The Socialist Feminist Project, Kathryn Russell

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Au Seuil Du Chaos : Devoir De Mémoire, Indicible Et Piège Du Devoir Dire, Issac Bazié

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

That literature has not entirely lost its means when faced with great human tragedies is a fact widely debated when it comes to the Holocaust. This text relies on a discussion of the unspeakable in order to reflect on the texts written about Rwanda’s genocide. Reading those texts’ thresholds reveals a tension of writing between history and fiction, “devoir de mémoire” and near resignation of speech.

Matthew S. Weinert On Slavery And Emancipation Edited By Rick Halpern And Enrico Del Lago. Oxford, Uk: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 416pp., Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Slavery and Emancipation edited by Rick Halpern and Enrico del Lago. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 416pp.