Social historian Ibrahima Thioub (Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar) reflects on “history from below,” French colonial prisons, African resistance, and ongoing digitization projects at UCAD. Guest co-host is Ibra Sene, a former student of Thioub’s, who is finishing a dissertation at MSU on “Crime, Punishment, and Colonization: A History of the Prison of Saint-Louis and the Development of the Penitentiary System in Senegal, ca.1860-ca.1940.”
Historian Robert Edgar (Howard University) discusses his project on African Americans and South Africa, showing how black communities in different parts of the world engage, interact and influence each other. Edgar talks about the history of representations of the Zulu in America, and reflects on how he rescued the Prophetess Nonthetha Nkwenkwe and the African Communist Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana from the ash heap of history. No wonder The New York Times dubbed him “the Indiana Jones of South Africa.”
Patrick Bond (Director of the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal) talks to us about his new book Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society: Negative Returns on South African Investments (co-edited with Rehana Dada and Graham Erion, 2007). Bond discusses carbon trading’s effects on global warming, critiques free market approaches to climate change, and charts the rise of African grassroots movements for environmental justice.
Bush’s recent Presidential visit to Africa invites deeper analysis. In this episode, Professor Dave Wiley (African Studies Center Director at MSU) examines the militarization of US foreign policy in Africa and its potential impact on Africa and Africans. We also discuss why African Studies scholars (e.g. ACAS) and African Studies Centers rejected funding from US military and intelligence agencies in defense of free speech, transparency, and equal relationships with African partners.
Professor Folu Ogundimu (MSU, Journalism) joins Peter Limb and Olabode Ibironke, an MSU graduate student in Comparative Literature, to discuss how the transformation of mass media in contemporary Africa has revitalized democracy and strengthened freedom of expression. Later in the episode, Peter Alegi reports on the “Media, Communication, and Sports in Africa” conference, and speaks with Simon Akindes (University of Wisconsin, Parkside) about the joys and sorrows of global African football.
In this episode’s first segment, Peter Alegi reports on the exciting conclusion of the 2008 African Nations Cup in Ghana. In the second segment, South African media scholar Sean Jacobs (at left; University of Michigan) discusses his blog Leo Africanus, and shares his insights on the relationship between media, popular culture, and democracy in Africa.
This episode focuses on African football (soccer), cinema, and literature. In the first segment, Peter Alegi reports on the first round of the African Nations Cup in Ghana. In the second segment, MSU Professors Ken Harrow and Safoi Babana-Hampton join us in a discussion centered around Harrow’s new book Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (Indiana University Press, 2007). Issues of authenticity, “truth,” self-expression, and the impact of new media connect the latest trends in African cinema and literature.
The inaugural episode of Africa Past and Present introduces the podcast and features an interview with University of Pennsylvania Professor Cheikh Anta Babou (MSU PhD 2002).“Africa matters,” says co-host Peter Alegi in the first segment. “It matters to America since about one in seven Americans trace their origins to the African continent. Africa also has global implications: economic, political, and cultural ones. Finally, Africa deserves to be studied and debated in its own right, like any other continent.” For co-host Peter Limb, “Podcasting is an exciting and vibrant forum, especially for communication. It opens up a new horizon for interaction not just in this country, but also with scholars, activists, and others in Africa itself.”
In the second segment, MSU University Distinguished Professor David Robinson joined Alegi for an interview with Cheikh Babou, the Senegalese historian and author of a new book entitled Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913 (Ohio University Press, 2007). Professor Babou hopes his book will encourage readers to “understand that Islam is diverse; not to see Islam as an essence, not to confuse it with Arab culture or Middle Eastern Culture.” Robinson stresses the importance of learning about religious diversity in a post-9/11 world and to appreciate that “what some people say is Islam is really a distortion of that main tradition.”
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