Race politics in Ghana
Jemima Pierre, professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, has written an ambitious book in The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (University of Chicago...
View ArticleWould Susan Rice have been a good choice for US Secretary of State?
Remember Susan Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State who wasn’t? It might seem old news now, as Senator John Kerry sits in front of his colleagues seeking their constitutionally-mandated “consent” to his...
View ArticleNovelist Will Ferguson wrote a novel about 419 scams. He won an award for it....
Guest Post by Robert Nathan To be 419′ed is to be fooled. Duped. Swindled. At least that’s the meaning as far as Nigerian slang is concerned — of which this book has plenty on offer. The question is:...
View ArticleAnother new book argues Zimbabwe land reform is a success
This evening in London, researchers Joseph Hanlon, Jeanette Manjengwa, and Teresa Smart will be launching their new book, “Zimbabwe takes back its land”, a book that reportedly argues that Zimbabwe’s...
View ArticleWhen ‘Africa’ at the Theatre Goes Wrong
Imagine you are a person in the Netherlands interested in African events or at least cultural events where Africa is (supposedly to be) prominently featured and you pick up a flyer of an event saying...
View ArticleDutch writer to Italian newspaper: There’s “too much Africa in South Africa”
Oscar Pistorius being charged with the alleged murder of his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day has given the Dutch writer Adriaan Van Dis the chance to play “South African expert” in a long interview in...
View ArticleThe Book of Marikana
Guest Post by Christopher Webb The day after the police shot 34 miners at Marikana a small group gathered outside the gates of parliament in Cape Town. Barely 100 people, holding signs calling for...
View ArticleMarcus Garvey’s Africa
Late last year I had the opportunity to review College of William and Mary History Professor Robert Vinson’s remarkable new book, The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in...
View ArticleDoes Zimbabwe’s new Constitution live up to women’s aspirations?
This weekend, Zimbabwe held a Constitutional referendum. And so Zimbabwe enjoyed yet another 15 seconds of international press attention. Turnout was reported as low. The public was as apathetic,...
View ArticleChinua Achebe: A Poet of Global Encounters
The first time I met Chinua Achebe I had just started teaching at Bard College, where I had been hired as Director of Africana Studies. I saw Chinua one evening at a campus event and nervously...
View ArticleWeekend Special, N°1000
1. African Dosseh Ayamam becomes the first man to walk on Mars. 2. Charismatic Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie has a new novel which is about love, race and … “hair politics.” She is a natural...
View ArticleAfrican Perspectives in Comics and Animation: The Agbaje Brothers
And now for something completely different: Recently, we had the opportunity to sit down with John and Charles Agbaje, the two brothers behind The Elite Comics & Art Studio at Central City Tower....
View ArticleAristide Zolberg and African Studies
In a 2010 interview, Aristide Zolberg—the pioneer Africanist political scientist who died on April 12 at the age of 81—described his early interest in the politics of a continent in the first throes...
View ArticleThe Master Drummer of Afrobeat
Tony Allen’s forthcoming book Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat (Duke University Press, September 2013): “Tony Allen is the autobiography of legendary Nigerian drummer...
View ArticleOn New African Writing
The latest issue of the Journal of Postcolonial and Commonwealth Studies, which I guest edited with Simon Lewis, is devoted to African writing in the twenty-first century. Simon and I were excited to...
View ArticleWhose “New African Writing”?
The latest issue of the Journal of Postcolonial and Commonwealth Studies takes on “African writing in the twenty-first century” and presents views on topics as varied as South African theater, queer...
View ArticleSummer Reading List
Everything I’ve heard and read about François-Xavier Fauvel-Aymar’s Le Rhinocéros d’Or tells me I’m going to love it… The author is a French historian who specializes in medieval Africa and sheds light...
View Article3 Books on Nelson Mandela
The American public radio network, NPR, asked me to recommend 3 books its listeners could read on Nelson Mandela’s life and legacy. Of course I recommended Long Walk to Freedom and Conversations with...
View ArticleWinter Reading List
In Lost in Transformation: South Africa’s Search for a New Future Since 1986, Sampie Terreblanche (emeritus professor of economics at Stellenbosch University) argues that South Africa’s ANC government...
View ArticleNigeria’s Soldiers of Fortune
In his new book, Soldiers of Fortune, the historian and commentator Max Siollun argues that the years 1984–1993 — a period of military rule in Nigeria — ‘crafted modern Nigerian society.’ Siollun is...
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