African Languages and Societies Commons^™

Cinema, Black Suffering, And Theodicy: Modern God, Terry Lindvall

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Shayne Lee, Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy: Modern God (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022).

Bravo Burkina!, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Bravo, Burkina! (2022), directed by Walé Oyéjidé.

Mami Wata, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Mami Wata (2023), directed by C.J. "Fiery" Obasi.

The Bible As Relic, Fetish Or Talisman In Nollywood Films: A Semiotic Perspective, Floribert Patrick C. Endong

Journal of Religion & Film

Many Nollywood Christian films tap into a plurality of myths and idiosyncrasies prevailing in Nigeria in particular and the Christendom in general. Some of these myths and idiosyncrasies revolve around the perceived magical powers of the Bible, particularly the Holy Book’s ability to neutralize or prevent the designs of paranormal and satanic entities. In line with such Christian myths, many Nollywood Christianity-based films deploy various typologies of artifacts, signs and special effects to represent the Bible as an object which is more than a mere carrier of holy scriptures and the voice of God. In this paper, attention is given …

Nanny, Sheila J. Nayar

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Nanny (2022), directed by Nikyatu Jusu.

Films For The Colonies: Cinema And The Preservation Of The British Empire, Thomas Barker

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Tom Rice, Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire (University of California Press, 2019).

Farewell Amor, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Farewell Amor (2020), directed by Ekwa Msangi.

This Is Not A Burial, It's A Resurrection, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (2019), directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese.

Reel Pleasures: Cinema Audiences And Entrepreneurs In Twentieth Century Urban Tanzania, Katie Young

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Laura Fair's Reel Pleasures: Cinema Audiences and Entrepreneurs in Twentieth Century Urban Tanzania.

Trickster Ambivalence In Kwaw Ansah’S Praising The Lord Plus One, Adwoa Opoku-Agyemang

Journal of Religion & Film

Kwaw Ansah’s film Praising the Lord Plus One revolves around a crooked charismatic preacher. This paper examines him as one of the manifestations of the West African trickster. Though the figure of the trickster is bound to West African folktales, his familiar, contradictory and ultimately funny features transcend the oral tale to manifest in other media. The article examines Gabriel’s self-transformation into a miracle-maker, his utilization of that identity, and his unmaking. It looks at how biblical exegesis and Christian rites, while apparently major aspects of the film, are reduced to marketing tools for sustaining the trickster ethos. The paper …

Dialectics Of Tradition And Memory In Black Panther, Sailaja Krishnamurti

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of film reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler.

“Hi Auntie”: A Paradox Of Hip Hop Socio-Political Resistance In Killmonger, Daniel White Hodge

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of film reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler.

The Semi-Anti-Apocalypse Of Black Panther, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of films reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler.

Black Panther As Spirit Trip, Laurel Zwissler

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of film reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler. This review analyzes engagement with the movie as a religious experience and considers some political implications of both its storyline and reception. In particular, the piece focuses on constructions of race, especially in relationship to Africa and African Americans, as well as practical tensions around commodifying dissent.

Racism And Capitalism In Black Panther, Kyle Derkson

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of film reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler.

The Ancestral Lands Of Black Panther And Killmonger Unburied, A. David Lewis

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of film reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler.

Ancestors Change Constantly: Subversive Religious Colonial Deconstruction In The Religion Of Black Panther, Jon Ivan Gill

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of film reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler.

I Am Not A Witch, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of I am not a Witch (2017), directed by Rungano Nyoni.

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 …

God Loves Uganda, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of God Loves Uganda (2013) directed by Roger Ross Williams.

Reviewed Work: The Housemaid By Amma Darko, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

A relative newcomer to the Ghanaian fiction-writing scene, Amma Darko is the author of a 1991 novel published in German and then issued in 1995 in its original English as Beyond the Horizon (see WLT 72:2, p.468).

Under The Tongue By Yvonne Vera, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

"Grandmother says it is sometimes good to forget, to bury the heavy things of now, the things which cannot be remembered without death becoming better than life." But survival lies in the speaking of silence, in the silence of voices beaten and lost, in the silence of "the many words a woman must swallow before she can learn to speak her sorrow and be heard," in the silence of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters.

Zenzele: A Letter For My Daughter By J. Nozipo Maraire, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

"A luta continua," the slogan for the revolution in much of southern Africa, is a befitting theme for Nozipo Maraire's mother-to-daughter clarion call to "remember" in order to know and be, for it is in knowing what makes one that one then knows how to be how to absorb "multiple frames of reality." Thus the essence of a mother's legacy to her daughter as she enters a new world, leaving her native Zimbabwe to study at Harvard, in the USA.

The Seasons Of Beento Blackbird By Akosua Busia, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

As the African diaspora continues to define its own unique position and global contributions, African diaspora studies are necessarily asserting themselves as essential to the cultural-diversity and multiculturalism discourse in the U.S. and, most important, as an indispensable part of the current discourse on pan-Africanist consciousness, global identity, and the new world order.

Without A Name By Yvonne Vera, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

A relative newcomer to the literary scene, Yvonne Vera joins the rising ranks of Zimbabwean writers and African women writers, earning her place with promising credentials, academic and literary. Vera is the author of two previous works, a volume of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992), and a poetic novel, Nehanda (1993; see WLT 69:i, p.212), which were shortlisted for the Regional Commonwealth Writers Award in 1993 and 1994 respectively.

Diedre Badejo. Òsun Sèègèsí: The Elegant Deity Of Wealth, Power And Femininity, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

The advocacy for African mother tongue source texts, translated or otherwise, has gone long unheeded and has been mired in a decade of academic debates about "privileged insider/arrogant outsider" approaches to and judgment of African literature in European languages. The Western feminist knowledge naming and claiming prerogative which has characterized much of feminist praxis in the seventies and eighties, especially in its self-assigned mandate to "speak" for "Third World" women, has forced the discursive territory to yet another level. The "damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't" mediating position African feminist voices find themselves in lately is forcing a text/context­ conscious criticism of modern African literature …

Nadezda Obradovic. African Rhapsody: Short Stories Of The Contemporary African Experience., Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

African Rhapsody, an anthology containing the work of twenty-five contemporary writers, prides itself on its diversity of topics from sixteen countries of North, South, East, and West Africa. In this fine harvest authentic stories are told by African writers about African characters and the overwhelming realities of their lives in Africa. Where similar anthologies have focused primarily on stories written in English with a few token translations from the French, African Rhapsody gives breadth not only to stories written originally in English but also to translate stories - five from French, three from Arabic, and one Portuguese. The foreword by …

The Author(Ity) Of The Text: The Dialectic Tension Between Fidelity And Creative Freedom -- The Case Of Wole Soyinka's “Free” Translation Of D. O. Fagunwa's Ogboju Ode, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Partant de la premisse selon laquelle toute traduction est necessairement une inter­ pretation, on examine la traduction de Wale Soyinka d'un texte yoruba de D. 0. Fagunwa et on discute du probleme de la liberte en traduction en commenr;ant par bien situer l' auteur et le texte dans leur contexte culture! et politique.

The sense of an author, generally speaking, is to be sacred and inviolable. (John Dryden, Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles, 1680)

Le traducteur n' est maftre de rien; ii est oblige de suivre partout son auteur, de se plier a toutes ces variations avec une …

The Heinemann Book Of African Women's Writing By Charlotte H. Bruner, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

African Rhapsody, an anthology containing the work of twenty-five contemporary writers, prides itself on its diversity of topics from sixteen countries of North, South, East, and West Africa. In this fine harvest authentic stories are told by African writers about African characters and the overwhelming realities of their lives in Africa. Where similar anthologies have focused primarily on sto­ries written in English with a few token translations from the French, African Rhapsody gives breadth not only to sto­ries written originally in English but also to translated sto­ries-five from French, three from Arabic, and one from Portuguese. The foreword by Chinua …

African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, And Continuity By Isidore Okpewho, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Along with the publication of his two earlier scholarly works, The Epic in Africa (1979) and Myth in Africa (1983), Isidore Okpewho's latest book, African Oral Literature, seems to have completed the natural course of scholarship "in the field," as Afracanists continue their scholarly attempts ar (re)visioning/(re)writing African oral traditions and literatures from an "insider" perspective--from the horse's moth, so to speak.