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Full-Text Articles in African History

Sociocultural & Leadership Transmission In The Somali Diaspora: Community Values, Cohesion, Family Unity & Patriarchal Leadership, Farhia A. Abdi Aug 2023

Sociocultural & Leadership Transmission In The Somali Diaspora: Community Values, Cohesion, Family Unity & Patriarchal Leadership, Farhia A. Abdi

The Journal of Social Encounters

This research explores the Somali Diaspora community in Ottawa, Canada’s intercultural understanding between their homeland and their host country. The task of this limited study is to assess the changes occurring in the contemporary Somali diaspora culture and changes in leadership perceptions, particularly those of male leadership, and changes in family integration, community cohesion and solidarity, and the transmission of cultural values across generations. This research confirms that changes did occur in the Somali Diaspora community in various ways, including family dynamics, community cohesion and the concept of transmitting cultural values to their younger generation. Themes are identified by the …


(Special Section) Translating Race: Mission Hymns And The Challenge Of Christian Identity, Philip Burnett Jun 2023

(Special Section) Translating Race: Mission Hymns And The Challenge Of Christian Identity, Philip Burnett

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

“Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,” “The race that long in darkness pined,” “To heal and save a race undone,” and “Sanctify a ransomed race” are a few examples of many references to “race” that exist in English-language hymnody. Throughout the nineteenth-century, hymns containing lines such as these, were exported from Britain into mission fields where translators had to find new ways to conceptualize notions of race and, in effect, created new group identities. This requires asking critical questions about the implications of what happened when ideas of race, in the Christian sense, interacted with non-religious notions of race in …


Fraternity, Martyrdom And Peace In Burundi: The Forty Servants Of God Of Buta, Jodi Mikalachki Dec 2021

Fraternity, Martyrdom And Peace In Burundi: The Forty Servants Of God Of Buta, Jodi Mikalachki

Journal of Global Catholicism

During Burundi's 1993-2005 civil war, students at Buta Minor Seminary were ordered at gunpoint to separate by ethnicity—Hutus over here, Tutsis over there! They chose instead to join hands and affirm their common identity as children of God. The forty students killed were quickly proclaimed martyrs of fraternity. Their costly solidarity defused the cry for reprisals and continues to inspire Burundians and others on the path of reconciliation. Drawing on fifty interviews with survivors, parents of martyrs, neighbors, religious leaders and other Burundian intellectuals, this essay examines how Burundian Catholics understand the significance of the Buta martyrdom to their …


Singing And Sensing The Unknown: An Embodied History Of Hindu Practice In Ghana, Shobana Shankar Jun 2021

Singing And Sensing The Unknown: An Embodied History Of Hindu Practice In Ghana, Shobana Shankar

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Hinduism fits well into the “sound-filled” West African religious soundscape, which is a scene of competition and conflict. This article explores the soundscape of devotional singing, mantras, and prayers as a central part of the embodiment and embedment of Hinduism among Africans in Ghana, where the Indian diaspora has been relatively small and the indigenous movement of Hinduism entirely through African initiative. Using ethnographic and written sources to examine the Hindu Monastery of Africa, founded by the Ghanaian monk Swami Ghanananda in 1975, I examine how the oral and aural popular devotions crafted by the swami have shifted attention away …


Tribute To John S. Mbiti, Joseph G. Healey, Mm Aug 2020

Tribute To John S. Mbiti, Joseph G. Healey, Mm

The Journal of Social Encounters

We continue to mourn John S. Mbiti, the Kenyan professor, author and theologian who died in Switzerland on 6 October, 2019 at the age of 87. He was one of the founders of our African Proverbs Project and the African Proverbs Working Group. He was one of cornerstones of our African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories Website.


Adventism In East Africa: Were The Initial Mission Strategies Effective?, Christopher R. Mwashinga May 2020

Adventism In East Africa: Were The Initial Mission Strategies Effective?, Christopher R. Mwashinga

Andrews University Seminary Student Journal

The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is one of the fastest-growing Christian denominations in the world. Studies show that the SDA Church in Africa in general and East Africa, in particular, has recorded tremendous growth since it was introduced in the region in the early 1900s. This article surveys the first fifty years of the beginning and development of the SDA Church in East African (1903–1953). It focuses on the three initial mission strategies employed by early Adventist missionaries to East Africa, including education, medical care, and publishing work. Early Adventist missionaries to East Africa established educational and medical institutions alongside …


A Fight Over Souls: Documentary Films On The Rwandan Genocide With A Christian Theme, Tommy Gustafsson Sep 2017

A Fight Over Souls: Documentary Films On The Rwandan Genocide With A Christian Theme, Tommy Gustafsson

Journal of Religion & Film

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda have spawned over 150 feature films and feature-length documentaries, making it into the second most audio-visually recreated genocide after the Holocaust. Within this large body of historical films a subgenre have emerged with a distinctive Christian theme. This article explores these Christian themed documentary films about the Rwandan genocide and positions them within a film historical perspective as well as analyzes and contextualizes them as a subgenre of films about the Rwandan genocide within films about genocide in general. Of note are how memory and historiography are used, and the links between …


A Review Of John Rists' "Augustine On Free Will And Predestination", Caleb H. A. Brown Jan 2017

A Review Of John Rists' "Augustine On Free Will And Predestination", Caleb H. A. Brown

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

In this paper I seek to summarize and critique John Rist’s article “Augustine on Free Will and Predestination.” Rist treats Augustine with honesty. When someone is as prominent, loved, and recognized as Augustine, when someone has as much authority as he does, the temptation to manipulate his writings into saying things which agree with one’s own position is strong. Rist resists this temptation, even concluding that Augustine holds a position on free will and predestination which Rist finds highly objectionable. But in his objections to Augustine’s position, Rist does not do justice to the whole system of Augustine’s thought. In …


La Dimension Cachée De L’Art Sénégalais Contemporain, Allen F. Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts Jun 2008

La Dimension Cachée De L’Art Sénégalais Contemporain, Allen F. Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

For nearly fifty years now, Dakar has been an epicenter of contemporary art, not just for continental Africa but for the entire world. Senegalese artists are well known internationally through participation in biennials, exhibitions, and gallery shows ; and many argue that they are contemporary artists from Senegal rather than “Senegalese artists” defined or constrained by their african identity. Among these, however, some match the global techniques and aesthetics of their works with local meanings derived from mystical Islam. Indeed, this “hidden side” can be very significant to the artists themselves even though it may be ignored by cosmopolitan connoisseurs.


L'Islam En Termes Chrétiens : Quand L’Aventure Ambiguë « Croise » Pascal Et Saint Augustin, Mbaye Diouf Dec 2006

L'Islam En Termes Chrétiens : Quand L’Aventure Ambiguë « Croise » Pascal Et Saint Augustin, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

If it is recognized that The Ambiguous Adventure is one of Africa’s most studied texts, it should also be noted that most analyses of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel are general sociological commentaries on a mythologized Africa or on a society that is caught in the snares of its own mythic “values.” These commentaries often forget that the text is also the passage through a history that was imposed on Africa, and one which the writer tries to interpret in his own way. If Kane’s text plunges into the Christian faith by invoking Pascal and Augustine, it is in order to …


L’Écriture De La Femme Musulmane Dans Loin Demédine D’Assia Djebar, Yvonne-Marie Mokam Dec 2005

L’Écriture De La Femme Musulmane Dans Loin Demédine D’Assia Djebar, Yvonne-Marie Mokam

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Assia Djebar is one of the most important figures in contemporary African literature. Her views are structured around a critique of the misrepresentation of Muslim women. It is precisely this challenge that is undertaken in Loin de Médine (1991), in which Djebar challenges various stereotypes in order to offer a new image of Asian women.


Entre Intertextualité Et Réécriture, Alexie Tcheuyap Dec 2005

Entre Intertextualité Et Réécriture, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Aesthetic practices have become more and more diversified in contemporary cultures. Although rewritings and adaptations are most common from literature to film, from myth/epic to novels, African filmmakers have recently been inaugurating novelization, that is the literary rewriting of a film. This essay examines the case of the Algerian filmmaker Merzac Allouache, who has written Bab el-Oued City, based on his film Bab el-Oued, in order to escape the technical and practical limitations of cinema. In doing so, he best expresses the challenges of contemporary Algeria, which is permanently threatened by violence and Islamic fundamentalism.


Présupposés Idéologiques Et Discours Critique Dans Présence Francophone, Lydia Martel Dec 2003

Présupposés Idéologiques Et Discours Critique Dans Présence Francophone, Lydia Martel

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper illustrates the way Humanities’ categories have allowed us to read traces of cultural crossing in African fiction since the 70s. Many articles published in Présence Francophone turn the 19th century’s anthropological model around, whilst others oppose Judeo-Christian and African myths. Some propose a monolithic vision of identity, until in-between positions appear, revealing the many elements of identity in a much easier way. Among these components, the Western and African modes of knowing are pointed out by studies relying on the works of Lévi-Strauss, Bachelard and Bakhtine.