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Bringing together often unconnected modes of analysis, research and debate on leisure in African studies, an interdisciplinary team of scholars reflects on the complex conceptions, creation and consumption of leisure in African cities from the nineteenth century to the present, drawing intriguing comparisons with leisure studies in Western Europe and North America. Covering leisure activities from football to music and dance to films and television in cities from Cairo to Cape Town, this book opens a new chapter in African cultural studies.
In the last decade, a certain discomfort, at times even impatience emerged among critics of African cinema. The onset of such uneasiness can be traced back to the demise of the liberationist discourse, to the questioning of the monolithic expression African cinema, and finally to the critical exploration of various forms of visual narratives developing at a fast speed on the continent. Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations reexamines African cinema of the nationalist era within the context of contemporary major Euro-American film trends. It argues that the aesthetic diversification of African cinema can be traced as far back as the nationalist era."
Sembene is one of the major figures of African literature, and also one of Africa's foremost film directors. This is the first study to give an overview of his work in fiction and on screen. This book examines Sembene Ousmane's radical reinterpretation of African history and culture, focusing on representations of the African city, animism, the role of women, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The author argues that Sembene 'imagines alternatives' to the dominant narratives of both Africa in general, and Senegal in particular. North America: Africa World Press
Challenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film. Volume One of this landmark series on African cinema draws together foundational scholarship on its history and evolution. Beginning with the ideological project of colonial film to legitimize the economic exploitation and cultural hegemony of the African continent during imperial rule to its counter-historical formation and theorization. It comprises essays by film scholars and filmmakers alike, among them Roy Armes, Med Hondo, Fèrid Boughedir, Haile Gerima, Oliver Barlet, Teshome Gabriel, and David Murphy, including three distinct dossiers: a timeline of key dates in the history of African cinema; a comprehensive chronicle and account of the contributions by African women in cinema; and a homage and overview of Ousmane Sembène, the "Father" of African cinema.
Uniting a sense of the political dimensions of language appropriation with a serious, yet accessible linguistic terminology, The African Palimpsest examines the strategies of `indigenization? whereby West African writers have made their literary English or French distinctively `African'. Through the apt metaphor of the palimpsest ? a surface that has been written on, written over, partially erased and written over again ? the book examines such well-known West African writers as Achebe, Armah, Ekwensi, Kourouma, Okara, Saro?Wiwa, Soyinka and Tutuola as well as lesser-known writers from francophone and anglophone Africa. Providing a great variety of case-studies in Nigerian Pidgin, Akan, Igbo...
Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635--1848 Bernard Moitt Examines the reaction of black women to slavery. In Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635--1848, Bernard Moitt argues that gender had a profound effect on the slave plantation system in the French Antilles. He details and analyzes the social condition of enslaved black women in the plantation societies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), and French Guiana from 1635 to the abolition of slavery in the French colonial empire in 1848. Moitt examines the lives of black women in bondage, evaluates the impact that the slave experience had on them, and assesses the ways in which women reacted to and coped ...
Eschewing the postcolonial hubris that suggests Africa could only define itself in relation to its colonizers, a problem plaguing many studies published in the West on African cinema, this entry in the Directory of World Cinema series instead looks at African film as representing Africa for its own sake, values, and artistic choices. With a film industry divided by linguistic heritage, African directors do not have the luxury of producing comedies, thrillers, horror films, or even love stories, except perhaps as DVDs that do not travel far outside their country of production. Instead, African directors tend to cover serious sociopolitical ground, even under the cover of comedy, in the hopes of finding funds outside Africa. Contributors to this volume draw on filmic representations of the continent to consider the economic role of women, rural exodus, economic migration, refugees and diasporas, culture, religion and magic as well as representations of children, music, languages and symbols. A survey of national cinemas in one volume, Directory of World Cinema: Africa is a necessary addition to the bookshelf of any cinephile and world traveller.
Poverty is South Africa's greatest challenge. But what is 'poverty'? How can it be measured? And how can it be reduced if not eliminated? In South Africa, human science knowledge about the cost of living grew out of colonialism, industrialization, apartheid and civil resistance campaigns, which makes this knowledge far from neutral or apolitical. South Africans have used the Poverty Datum Line (PDL), Gini coefficients and other poverty thresholds to petition the state, to chip away at the pillars of white supremacy, and, more recently, to criticize the postapartheid government's failures to deliver on some of its promises. Rather than promoting one particular policy solution, this book argues that poverty knowledge teaches us about the dynamics of historical change, the power of racism in white settler societies, and the role of grassroots protest movements in shaping state policies and scientific categories. Readers will gain new perspectives on today's debates about social welfare, redistribution and human rights, and will ultimately find reasons to rethink conventional approaches to advocacy.
A comprehensive synthesis of the ideal of freedom in African culture from a pan-African perspective after independence.
The “Self” Which is Not One: Women’s Life-Writing in French, assembles articles on women’s life-writing from diverse areas of the Francophone world. It is comprised of nine chapters that discuss female writers from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Europe, in addition to French writers. The idea of the self is currently attracting widespread interest in academia, most notably in the arts and humanities. The development of postmodernism supposes a fragmented “subject” formed from the network of available discourses, rather than a stable and coherent self. Jacques Derrida, for example, wrote that there is no longer any such things as a “full subject,” and Juli...