African History Commons^™

“In Her Shoes”: Victorian Lady Explorers In Imperial Africa And Their Relationship To Contemporary Travellers Of A Commercialized, Nostalgic Landscape, Mary Smith

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Smith uses the framework of the Cape to Cairo trek to illuminate both the problematic maternalist feminism of early 19th century women, and to draw parallels with contemporary nostalgia for a romanticized and racialized past.

Géotropisme De Chamoiseau, Jean-Louis Cornille

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

There seems to be a strange parallel between the vegetable kingdom in which Patrick Chamoiseau sets his Biblique des derniers gestes and the way the narrative is being played out. The mangrove, with its entangled roots and stems, constitutes a perfect image of the novel, whose multiple branches are no longer anchored in any reality or in a centralised system, but seem moved by a principle which we could call “bibliotropic”, since in Biblique one could easily find traces of Perse, García Márquez, Glissant, Césaire and even of Rabelais. But certain “stems” are more difficult to track within this dense …

Book Reviews, Owen Sichone, Elizabeth Haines

Zambia Social Science Journal

Reviews of:

Death, Belief and Politics in Central African History. By Walima T. Kalusa and Megan Vaughan

Looking For Mrs Livingstone. By Julie Davidson

Lucumí (Yoruba) Culture In Cuba: A Reevaluation (1830s -1940s), Miguel Ramos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The status, roles, and interactions of three dominant African ethnic groups and their descendants in Cuba significantly influenced the island’s cubanidad (national identity): the Lucumís (Yoruba), the Congos (Bantú speakers from Central West Africa), and the Carabalís (from the region of Calabar). These three groups, enslaved on the island, coexisted, each group confronting obstacles that threatened their way of life and cultural identities. Through covert resistance, cultural appropriation, and accommodation, all three, but especially the Lucumís, laid deep roots in the nineteenth century that came to fruition in the twentieth.

During the early 1900s, Cuba confronted numerous pressures, internal and …

Women And The Second Estate In 16th Century Zambezia: Gendered Powers, A 'Puppet' African Queen And Succession In Vakaranga Society, 1500–1700, George G. Levin

Master's Theses

Women in vaKaranga society of the 15th to 17th centuries have been portrayed as oppressed by an "extremely patriarchal" system, but the reality, while still fitting the simple classification of a 'patriarchal' monarchy, indicates quite a bit more negotiation of gendered powers than women, as a class, experienced in the Mediterranean or East Asia. The vaKaranga were the architects of Great Zimbabwe, the capital of a growing state, colonizing their cousins of the Zambezi river, which their Kusi-Mashariki Bantu forefathers had traversed southward a millennium before. Civil war had (apparently) split one nation into two states, Mutapa (Monomotapa) and Khami …

Race, Tribe And Nation On East Africa's Coast: From Dubois To Mahmood Mamdani, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

No abstract provided.

Morality, The Sacred And God In Ghanaian Hip- Hop, Harry N. K. Odamtten

History

The adoption of Hip-Hop by the world’s youth is a turning point in the history of youth culture in particular and global public culture in general. The embracing of Hip-Hop in the West African country of Ghana is exemplary of this worldwide transformation. The indigenous Ghanaian version of Hip-Hop is Hip-Life. This Ghanaian musical genre is a combination of Hip-Hop and High-Life. High-Life is also a Ghanaian genre with West African and Afro- Diaspora roots. It emerged in Ghana as part of the anti-colonial struggle in West Africa, and has spawned of many varieties until the emergence of Hip- Life. …

Self-Presentation And Identity In The Roman Empire, Ca. 30 Bce To 225 Ce, Rhiannon Ysabel-Marie Orizaga

Dissertations and Theses

The presentation of the body in early imperial Rome can be viewed as the manipulation of a semiotic language of dress, in which various hierarchies that both defined and limited human experience were entrenched. The study of Roman self-presentation illuminates the intersections of categories of identity, as well as the individual's desire and ability to resist essentializing views of Romanness (Romanitas), and to transform destiny through transforming identity. These categories of identity include gender; sexuality or sexual behavior; social status; economic status; ethnicity or place of origin; religion; and age. Applying the model of a matrix of identity deepens our …

Women's Resistance To Apartheid, Melinda Laber

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

Apartheid was an oppressively destructive system that influenced many lives, not only in South Africa, but also in many nearby provinces and countries. This influence occurred because apartheid was so morally wrong. It forced many men, women and children to be slaves in their own country. These people could not live their own lives. They were made to obey the laws of the white people with a nightmarish force that terrified all and killed thousands. Even those blacks that lived under apartheid lived in conditions that were more horrible …

Bantu Education, Andrew Phillips

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

South Africa has had to deal with issues of racial differences since colonial times. British settlers came into this foreign country and claimed it as their own. Until recently, these settlers were able to treat the black people of South Africa as a subservient and inferior race as a result of the system of apartheid. Many different strategies were needed to keep this imbalanced system in place. One such strategy was employed through education, or a lack thereof. As long as blacks received a lower quality education than whites, …

Afro-Environmentalism: Black Stewardship In The New Millennium, Shelby Renee Burks Ward

Black Issues Conference

In the 21st century, societies face serious environmental problems. Black leadership in the environmental arena—stewardship—is vital for successful decision-making that respects all life on the planet, human health, and sustainable economy. Afro-environmentalism will explore how the legacy of the civil rights movement inspires environmental activism, current environmental problems, and how people of African descent are needed to effectively address those problems.

As African-Americans, the civil rights leaders of yesterday gave us an incredible legacy. Men and women fought against oppression and gave their lives for equal treatment, justice, and freedom. Today, environmental problems also include matters of injustice, untruth, and …

« Banlieue Noire » : La Question Noire Dans La Littérature Urbaine Contemporaine, Stève Puig

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Just as the “beur” movement started to flourish in France in the 80’s and the 90’s, a new question has emerged in French society in the last decade: the “black question”, which deals with the place of Africans and Antilleans in French society today. At the same time, a new literary genre has emerged: urban literature, which largely tackles themes related to the presence of Afro-caribbean people in metropolitan France. This article seeks to analyze three urban novels which take place in France, and more specifically how characters situate themselves regarding their Frenchness as the French government attempted to redefine …

Mobilizing Insurgent Pasts Toward Decolonial Futures, Patrick Crowley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project is an inquiry into modes of decolonial resistance that mobilize alternative relationships to the past against the modern/colonial writing of history from a Eurocentric perspective taken as universal. I contend that knowledges and memories rooted in non-Western cultural traditions have formed the epistemological basis for ongoing opposition to the hegemonic conception of history as the unfolding of global structural transformations on a single, homogenous timescale. I examine works by Frantz Fanon, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Zapatista videomakers that expressly reject a Eurocentric, monotopic perspective of history. My objective is to demonstrate the decolonial efforts of intellectuals and ordinary people …

Composing The African Atlantic: Sun Ra, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, And The Poetics Of African Diasporic Composition, James Gregory Carroll

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of the musical, written, and spoken production of Sun Ra and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti with respect to the larger African Atlantic intellectual environment, situating the two artists as both shapers of an Atlantic intellectual culture as well as artists who were, in turn, shaped by that culture. Through a reading of their creative work, the dissertation argues that, even given the obvious cultural, temporal, and temperamental differences between Sun Ra and Fela, both artists' orientations toward musical composition and performance share similar preoccupations with the recitation of cultural memory and the dialogic creation of historical …

Antonio Preciado And The Afro Presence In Ecuadorian Literature, Rebecca Gail Howes

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the literary trajectory of Antonio Preciado Bedoya (1941), a major Afroecuadorian writer, poet and diplomat whose work spans more than 50 years. Although relatively unknown outside of Ecuador, this dissertation will address that lack of recognition by studying his work in the more general context of the African Diaspora. It will reflect upon Preciado’s re-definition of Ecuadorian identity in the new millennium. Preciado is a poet who portrays the Afro presence as central to the national experience of ethnic diversity and the construction of a pluricultural Ecuador. He emphasizes that Afroecuadorians be recognized as an integral component …

"Thaai Thathaiyai Ngai Thaai": Narratives Of Rituals, Agency, And Resistance In The Klfa (Mau Mau) Struggle For Kenya's Independence, Henry Muoki Mbunga

Pan African Studies - Theses

The purpose of this project is to examine the role of rituals in the Mau Mau struggle for Kenya's independence. Traditionally, research on the Mau Mau has focused on the political and socio-economic aspects of Kenya's anti-colonial struggle. As a result, the place of spirituality and, in particular, the role of rituals in the Mau Mau struggle has largely been ignored in existing literature. Initially, when KLFA rituals were studied at the height of the Mau Mau struggle, the task was undertaken by colonial anthropologists and psychologists who were often unable to escape the snare of racist and Eurocentric prejudices …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …

Cold War Battleground In Africa: American Foreign Policy And The Congo Crisis, January 1959 - January 1961, Souleyman Saleh Souleyman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the late 1950s, the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union turned the Congo as one of the most volatile regions of the Third World. Because of Belgium's failure to effective decolonize the Congo, and because of the secession of two of the richest provinces of the Congo, the country would quickly fell into chaos and a civil war that would force its former colonial power to maintain its economic and military influence in the region. This neocolonial attitude induced Congo's Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, to request a military assistance from the Soviet Union. In …

An Omen Of Things To Come: Translated From The Original Text "L'Ombre Des Choses À Venir" By Kossi Efoui, Amber Vandivort

Masters Theses

An Omen of Things to Come follows the story of a young man, recently entered into adulthood while he recounts the horrible histories, his own and those of his comrades and acquaintances, that have followed him through childhood, war, and the rediscovery of his father. He draws you into the story through first person narrative and allows you to walk alongside him and relive his past. His personal experiences open the readers eyes to the violence, disappearances and uncertainty that surround people in a time of war: in particular how these atrocities affect the lives of abandoned children and those …

On Counting, Consumption, And Labour: Writing Histories Of Central Africa, Robert Ross, Iva Peša

Zambia Social Science Journal

This special issue of the Zambia Social Science Journal is the product of the fifth CART conference, held in Oegstgeest, the Netherlands, from 28-29 November 2013. Beginning in 2005, the research programme From Muskets to Nokias: Technology, Consumption and Social Change in Central Africa from Pre-Colonial Times to the Present (Leiden University and partners) has facilitated five Central African Research Themes (CART) conferences in the Netherlands and in Zambia. These conferences highlighted research being carried out by researchers associated with the programme, and provided a forum within which researchers could debate and discuss their findings and on-going research intentions. During …

The Politics Of Household Budget Research In Colonial Central Africa, Robert Ross

Zambia Social Science Journal

This paper investigates the various academic studies of the household budgets of Africans living in what became the countries of Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, and the Congolese province of Katanga. These studies were made during the colonial period, by members of the Rhodes- Livingstone Institute, the Central Statistical Office of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, in what was then Salisbury, and by Belgian researchers in the Congo. It demonstrates how what at first sight appears to be a neutral form of investigation was in fact highly politicised. On the one hand, there were many who showed how African incomes …

Copper’S Corollaries: Trade And Labour Migration In The Copperbelt (1910-1940), Enid Guene

Zambia Social Science Journal

The geopolitical importance of the mining industry in Zambia and Katanga, and the rural-urban migration patterns that it brought about, has been the subject of many studies. And yet, the extent to which these industries were interdependent is often downplayed or overlooked. Looking more closely at the history of the Zambian and Katangese Copperbelts, one can see that, despite their separateness, there was interplay between them. During the British South Africa Company rule of Rhodesia (1899-1924), Northern Rhodesia was developed as an important labour and food reserve for the Katangese mines. Following the onset of the Great Depression in the …

Book Reviews, Duncan Money

Zambia Social Science Journal

Review of:

The long shadow of the British Empire: The on going legacies of race and class in Zambia. By Juliette Bridgette Milner-Thornton

Wealth, Success, And Personhood: Trajectories Of Labour Migration From Mwinilunga District, 1930s-1970s, Iva Peša

Zambia Social Science Journal

What were the causes and consequences of labour migration from Mwinilunga District between the 1930s and 1970s? Within Zambian historiography, economic and political aspects of labour migration have received much attention. Labour migration has been analysed within dichotomies of rural-urban, development-underdevelopment or tradition-modernity. Instead, this article proposes to bridge such dichotomies and to foreground the socio-cultural dispositions behind labour migration. If mobility is viewed as a social, rather than a geographical practice, connections and long-term continuities come to light. Through the case of Mwinilunga District the causes, motives and effects of labour migration will be examined. Why did individuals decide …

What Should We Do With The Social Construct Of Race?, Jason A. Gordon

Senior Theses and Projects

Today, race is something that many people still consider to be an essential component of their identities. Even though race has been proven to be nothing more than a social construct, it still is in many regards something that the people living in our society tend take for granted. In this paper, the concept of race will be critically examined and analyzed. The history of race will be closely followed and it will be discussed as to whether or not this social construct is something worth preserving.

Global Futures And Government Towns: Phosphates And The Production Of Western Sahara As A Space Of Contention, Mark Drury

Publications and Research

The study of natural resources lends itself to theorizing the politics of nature and the politics of time. The space of Western Sahara, where both remain highly contested, provides an opportunity to consider the ramifications of resources in political conflict at different historical moments. Drawing from environmental histories of North Africa and the Sahara, as well as the anthropology of time, the author focuses on two historical moments. The first, from 1945 to 1972, concerns the discovery of phosphate deposits during the Spanish colonial period and the implications of this discovery for political authority in the Sahara more broadly. The …

Air Too Pure For Slavery And The Rights Of British Liberty: The Black Experience In London, 1772-1883, Tony A. Frazier

Dissertations

This dissertation presents abundant evidence that people of African descent were very present and visible in eighteenth-century London society. In the eighteenth century, London was one of the largest cities in the world with a population that reached almost 700,000 in 1750 and over a million in 1800. In addition, Great Britain was the leading slave trafficking nation in the world. Therefore, it was no surprise that the debate concerning black freedom and liberty was center stage in one of the most important regions in Europe and the Atlantic world. This question, much like the development of slavery in eighteenth-century …

The Comparison And Contrast Of South Africa’S Apartheid With Australia’S Stolen Generations., Alexis Lynn Powers

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Black Women And Apartheid: Oppression, Resistance And The Post-Apartheid Struggle, Erika Levy

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Session D-1: African Muslims And The Transatlantic Slave Trade, Steven Buenning

Professional Learning Day

African Muslims played central roles in the largest forced migration in human history; the transatlantic slave trade. This presentation employs primary sources from the online collection of the National Humanities Center and from the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (Emory University). Participants will engage in close reading of two memoirs of Muslim slaves, as well as three newspaper articles written in 1828. In addition, participants will receive geography exercises. A Powerpoint and a full list of helpful resources are included.