African History Commons^™

Mango Beti Et Les Mythologies Postcoloniales : Héritier Et Inspirateur, Nathalie Etoke

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Mango Beti belongs to a nationalist tradition embodied by Ruben Um Nyobe, the Cameroonian revolutionary. This paper analyzes how the writer manages to rebuild the aborted Rubenist ideal through fictional devices. Charismatic leaders such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, who have been able to bring about social change and improve the living conditions of their people, also nurture Beti's political commitment. What is the link between the writer and these inspiring men? Is Mongo Beti himself a similar inspiration for other African writers?

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.

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.

Patrice Emery Lumumba : Entre Metaphore Et Metonymie, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The purpose of this text is to analyze the historiography devoted to Patrice Lumumba and the use of rhetoric that launched him into legend. The metaphor characterizes Lumumba in his journey towards death and the alienation of identity, rendering concrete a kind of degradation, of the animated and the unanimated. Further, the metaphor breaks down into a string of fragments, or of metonymical qualities. Lumumba's struggle for justice, equality, purity, truth, and the ideal translates the drama of which he is a victim into an extreme search for the ideal. This drama expresses itself by a notable use of the …

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, …

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.

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.

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 …

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

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

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Mechthild Nagel

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.

Arms Control, Mary Kennan Herbert

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

No abstract provided.

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.

Rulers, Scholars, And Invaders: A Select Bibliography Of The Songhay Empire, Brent D. Singleton

Library Faculty Publications & Presentations

No abstract provided.

0731: Claudia Peyton Papers, 1921-1984, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection consists primarily of correspondence sent from Claudie to family and church members in the United States between 1921 and 1979. Some early letters from the 1920s contain photographs of her time in Africa. Other materials include printed material such as her publication “Twenty Years in Africa”, a Mount Union Sentinal Newsletter, a poster and letter about her book “Forty-Six Years in Africa”, letters from her adopted children in Africa about her estate, negatives of her last visit to Huntington in 1963, unrelated birth announcements sent to family members, and envelopes.

What’S In A Name?: Seeing Feminism, Universalism, And Modernity, Zillah Ruth Eisenstein

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

Women’s rights activists have claimed–and disowned–the label “feminist.” This article revisits old questions in feminist discourse and probes what feminism(s) mean today for women across the globe. It explores the possibility of a polyversal feminism which expresses women’s potential humanity and moves beyond divisions. The plural acts of resistance to Empire are neither western or non-western. Women activists are encouraged to radically pluralize, rather than liberally pluralize the concept of feminism.

African Bibliophiles: Books And Libraries In Medieval Timbuktu, Brent D. Singleton

Library Faculty Publications & Presentations

The West African city of Timbuktu flourished as a center for Islamic scholarship from the 14th through the 16th century. The social structure of the city was based on wealth, with further stratification by degree of literacy, and expertise in interpreting Islamic legal texts. As a consequence, books and libraries evolved into blessed symbols of scholarship, wealth, and power. This study explores the history of books and libraries during the Golden Age of Timbuktu (1493--1591), followed by a discussion of the divergence of library practices in Timbuktu from those in the greater Islamic world of the time.

La Critique Et Léopold Sédar Senghor / Léopold Sédar Senghor Et La Critique, Fernando Lambert

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

L. S. Senghor has maintained a double relation with criticism: his poetical work has provoked plentiful critical production and the poet has always been in dialogue with his critical examiners. Furthermore, he has practised literary criticism himself. Criticism relating to Senghor comes from two quite different sources. From 1945 to 1960, the European criticism is outstanding, while the African criticism confines itself more to peripheral questions in the Senghorian poetical work: French language

and "Negritude". The withdrawal of the poet from the political stage in 1980 is a significant date for critical production in Africa. Let us add that the …

Rhétorique De La Réception Des Oeuvres Francophones Dans Présence Africaine, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyses the Reception discourse towards African and Caribbean Literatures in French. We will analyse some articles published in Présence africaine to show how this journal played a leading part in the promotion of African and Caribbean Literatures in French since its beginning in 1947 to now.

L’Aventure Du Discours Critique, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The text traces the course of African Literature’s critical adventure. For a long time, studies have been focused on African identity. The critic is often ethnologic, anthropological, cultural and attracted by exoticism. The critic is also attentive to everything that indicates the difference with occidental culture and without which the African text would only be an outline. There is also the frequent intrusion of empty concepts in African Literature criticism (for example : tradition, relatives, ethnic group, oral character, traditional religion, African rhythm, solidarity, communion between the living and the dead). From the criticism of humor and sources, to criticism …

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.

Discours Préfaciels Et Réception En Littérature Africaine De Langue Française, Sélom Komlan Gbanou

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Decisive instance between the text and its reader, the preface plays an important role in the reception of the literary work, as Gerard Genette emphasizes in his essay Seuils (1987). The present analysis proposes a reading of the stategies used in the prefaces of francophone African Literature from colonial times to the present. Who introduces whom? Why and how? These are a few of the questions this article deals with.

Le Rôle De La Critique Dans La Réception De L’Oeuvre Romanesque De Rachid Boudjedra, Valérie Lotodé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The favorable reception given by French criticism to some of Rachid Boudjedra’s novels can’t be explained by their literary quality only. In fact, the media’s opinion has been influenced by the image of the "authentically Algerian writer" that Boudjedra conveyed, as well as by the political context. Since the emergence of Algerian Literature in French journalistic and academic literary criticism, critics are bounded by ideological a priori.

African American Fugitive Slaves And Freemen In Matamoros, Tamaulipas, 1820–1865, John C. Gassner

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In the years leading up to the American Civil War, northeastern Mexico became a destination for fugitive slaves and African American freemen seeking refuge from the oppressive conditions caused by the expansion of the slave-based cotton economy in the southern United States and Texas. The geographic position of Matamoros, as well as social, economic and political changes in Mexico and the United States, made it one of the main destinations for African American emigrants leaving the Texas and other parts of the United States. This thesis examines the factors that caused different elements of African American fugitives slaves and freemen …

The Political Personality Of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Aubrey Immelman, Adam Beatty

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, from the conceptual perspective of Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant information regarding President Mugabe was extracted from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the second edition of the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM–IV.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles manuals.

Mugabe’s primary personality …

Enseigner La Littérature Francophone : À La Recherche De La Banalisation, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The emergence of francophone literatures as a field that is increasingly taught in departments of French has led to the creation of numerous positions dedicated to this area. The natural question that specialists face is how to devise strategies to develop and entrench this new discipline in American universities, concerned as they are with budgetary issues. The present study argues that only the constant search for cooperation between Francophonie and related academic fields will facilitate its institutionalization.

Écriture Et Identité Dans La Littérature D’Afrique Du Sud : Le Cas D’André Brink, Robert Mangoua

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

By engaging his works against apartheid, André Brink chose at the same time to face a double problem of identity: identity of his writing and his personal identity. To the first problem he responds by the relationship with the alter ego (borrowing from others) and to the second by his identification to Africa. His texts, luxuriant in “intertextual relations” but essentially oriented towards Europe, reveals a eurocentric reflex in him that revokes the problem of his personal identity.

De L’Aliénation À La Libération, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay addresses the issue of education in pre and post-colonial Africa. It examines the ideological discourses, challenges and consequences associated with the adoption of western education in African countries. Based on novels and films, some of which are set in universities, the article analyses the effects of violence and irrelevant syllabi on African education, and argues that in order for knowledge to serve as a tool for real liberation, it has to be relevant to the social environment. It contends further that, paradoxically, even colonial education can contribute towards the liberation of Africans from some problematic aspects of their …