African History Commons^™

Griffith Davis Photograph Collection, Donna M. Wells, Melvin Barrolle, Meaghan Alston, Jaclynn Martin

Prints and Photographs Department

In 1981 Griffith Davis donated to the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center 7,000 photos and negatives taken in Liberia. It was the largest pictorial donation given to the Center. The collection dates between 1949 and 1974 but the bulk of the collection covers 1949 through 1952-the years of his travels to Liberia. The photographs are comprised of a rich variety of individuals including, Emperor Haile Selassie, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Liberian President, William V.S. Tubman, missionaries Dr. Albert Schweitzer and Dr. George Harley, Howard University President Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, and general shots of Liberia documenting the country’s social and economic change.

Review Of Saida Hodzic. The Twilight Of Cutting: African Activism And Life After Ngos. Oakland: Univeristy Of California Press, 2017., Tobe Levin Von Gleichen

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

With considerable fanfare, in Adieu !'Excision. Histoire et fin d'une tradition (Raymond Hounsa, 2009), Christa Muller rejoices in having saved Benin from FGM, the French text lauding eradication. The effort instigated by a Saarbrucken-based NGO, it has banned blades from the vicinity of vulvae. In 1996, on a state visit, Muller, then married to Saarland's governor Oscar Lafontaine, was asked by Benin's First Lady Rosine Vieyra Soglo¹ to assist her Inter-African Committee (IAC) chapter by creating an association. This she did, launching I(N)TACT, e.V. and securing 300,000 Euros for the movement, a sum with strings, however. Berlin insisted on …

Perhaps Discomfort Is The Answer: Refusing Liberal Feminism And Imperial Cartographies Of Thinking/Feeling, Saida Hodzic

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

The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs is an unsettling feminist ethnography that traces the movements of three objects: the endings of female genital cutting in Ghana, their relationship to anti-cutting campaigns and the forms of governance they instantiate, and the role anthropology and feminism have played in this governance since colonial rule. It makes the case that the three objects must be studied together: namely, that we need to understand the practice of female genital cutting alongside its endings; that cutting does not exist outside of anti-cutting campaigns; and that anti-cutting campaigns are entangled with both …

Ghosting Humanity: In Search Of An Ethics For The Disappeared, John Kaiser Ortiz

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

This paper visualizes what an ethics of the disappeared might look like if the troubled ontology of ghosts and their (un)seen realities are posited as real as allied discussions of the victims of human trafficking and other instances of violence against women, including femicide and sexual slavery.

Review Of Walaa Alqaisiya. Decolonial Queering In Palestine. London: Routledge, 2023, Ankita Chatterjee

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

Decolonial Queering in Palestine by WalaaAlqaisiya offers an in-depth study of the conquest of Palestine with respect to the variegated power structures of settler colonialism and underscores the political significance of a reformulated mode of decolonization. It argues for the need to interweave queer into the native Palestinian positionality termed as 'decolonial queering', so as to challenge the (hetero) sexualizing and gendered discourses embedded within both the Israeli/Zionist settler colonial regime and the Palestinian Nationalist visions of liberation. By the 'ethnographic' engagement with the works of Palestinian artists and activists from one of the prominent queer groups, alQaws, the book …

Review Of Emergent Masculinities: Gendered Power And Social Change In The Biafran Atlantic Age. By Ndubueze L. Mbah. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019. 307 P. $ 33.20., Nadir A. Nasidi

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

For a long period of time, women played significant roles in many pre-colonial African societies, serving in various capacities as religious, political, and economic leaders. The exact roles and status of these women, however, differ contrastively from one society to another based on factors such as religion, culture, and social organization. Though this unpopular fact about African history receives little or no attention from scholars, few studies offer some insights into the history and transformation of the powers of female leaders in Africa (Weir, 2000; Ogbomo, 2005; Weir, 2006; Achebe, 2011; Akyeampong & Fofack, 2014). Along this intersection, Mba's Emergent …

Feminists As Cultural ‘Assassinators’ Of Pakistan, Afiya S. Zia

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

Pakistan’s annual Aurat March (Women’s March) signifies a milestone in the culture of feminist protest, but a tense impasse follows a series of encounters between sexual and religious politics, and this has serious implica- tions for rights-based activism in the Islamic Republic.

The Fundamentalist Nexus Of Neoliberalism, Rentier Capitalism, Religious And Secular Patriarchies, And South Asian Feminist Resistances, Fawzia Afzal-Khan

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

In two case studies from Pakistan, which I then link to Afghanistan (under the Taliban before and after the Soviet/ US proxy war there) as well as the Farmer’s Movement in India—I wish to proffer an intersectional analysis of debates around the issue of women’s rights in the global south. Feminist artivism (art-as-activism), can help build solidarities to mount resistances against globally-inflected state repression in our age of neoliberal economic and religious fundamentalisms, which, working in tandem, seek to roll back the rights of women and minorities in and across South Asia, as elsewhere.

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Forest City Memories: A Comprehensive Look At Black History In London Ontario, Isaac Edward Mapp

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The way we record history and reflect on the events of the past often shows the present foundation a community stands on to be socially sustainable and to look toward the future with better clarity. The city of London’s history is some of the richest in Ontario, and the heroism surrounding this history is proudly planted throughout the nooks and crannies of London and beyond. Anyone walking through Victoria Park will notice the Holy Roller tank which fought on D-Day and beyond, or the war memorial featuring a proud and rigid soldier and canons to celebrate Victoria Park and London’s …

Review Of Undoing The Knots: Five Generations Of American Catholic Anti-Blackness, Peter R. Gathje

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism, Charles Whitmer Wright

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of How To Be An Antiracist (An African’S View), Joseph L. Mbele

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Interview With Nyaruhogaze Nyamuco, Nyaruhogaze Nyamuco, Ezra Schrader

Interviews

Transcript of interview and audio recording conducted with Nyaruhogaze Nyamuco. Per the "Methodology" section, the transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

This interview was recorded in Des Moines, Iowa and manually transcribed.

Afn 122 Course Design Worksheet And Content: An Anti - Racist And Culturally Inclusive Pedagogy, Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Open Educational Resources

Studying (and teaching) such a vast and diverse continent can be challenging. Because no introductory course can claim to be fully comprehensive, this one will explore several themes in the history of Africa and its peoples that the professor finds important and noteworthy. The readings, lectures, films, and activities will consider broad regions of the continent, and the goals of this course include both knowledge and enjoyment. You should come away from this class with a new appreciation for Africa and a general idea of its history from 1500 to the present.

Law Library Blog (July 2022): Legal Beagle Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Spirituality & Wellness In The Black Lgbtqia+ Experience: A Literature Review, Black Pruitt

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This literature review explores the intersections of race, sexuality, spirituality, and wellness. The findings highlight the complex trauma caused by both racialized and religious violence and how they have historically impacted the lives of Black LGBTQIA+ people today. The research offers evidence for the benefit and efficacy of implementing traditional Afrodiasporic spirituality into expressive arts therapeutic treatment, particularly for Black LGBTQIA+ people and communities. This research also suggests the necessity for actively and effectively dismantling Western psychological frameworks and approaches that have been historically harmful towards Black and LGBTQIA+ people in order to pave pathways towards collective healing and liberation.

A Quest For Dignity: Colored Women’S Anti-Slavery Resistance In The Eighteenth Century British Jamaica And The Reconceptualization Of Human Rights, Yuwei (Ada) Liu

Of Life and History

The public conception of the Human Rights struggle was a European originated post-WWII campaign, advocated by the white organization through the top-down executing system on the non-European country. Nonetheless, by historicized Human Rights struggle, I found that the concept of rights and the ways to reclaiming them evolved under the effects of time, culture, gender, class, and race. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, enslaved and fugitive black women of Jamaica continually asserted their humanities in the face of institutional exploitation through the day to day resistance, black communal and family solidarity, and organized revolts. This argument builds upon …

Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …

"They Will Change The Situation Immediately": Perpetrator Subgroups And Germany's Genocidal Practices In Southwest Africa, James Michael Thaxton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The genocide of the Herero tribe in German Southwest Africa illuminates the horrors of colonialism broadly and of German settler colonialism more specifically. I contend that the perpetrators of this event can be separated into two broad subgroups, the Old Africans and the Metropole Soldiers, distinguished by their intentions, exploitative and exterminatory respectively, concerning the indigenous tribes. Those intentions were formed over varying lengths of time but are the result of either firsthand experience with the racial hierarchy in the colony or relying on information and misinformation relayed to the metropole. Utilizing primarily letters, diaries, journals, and postcards, I argue …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Pre-Event Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

Radical Folk Heroes: Anansi & Br’Er Rabbit’S West African Origins & Their Forced Pilgrimages, Sage Adia Swaby

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.