Africa Past & Present

Episode 63: Noise and Silence, War and Peace in the Politics of DR Congo

annette — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:56:12 +0000

Tom Turner (DR Congo country specialist, Amnesty International USA) on the politics of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, focusing on The Congo Wars and their complex political, economic and international dimensions; the obstacles to peace; and the ambiguities of the “Kony 2012” campaign.

Episode 62: Kingship, legitimacy, and violence in Rwanda and Eastern Congo

annette — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:19:31 +0000

David Newbury (Smith College) on the historical dynamics of kingship, legitimacy and violence in Central and East Africa, focusing on Alison Des Forges’s Defeat is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896-1931 and The Land beyond the Mists: Essays on Identity & Authority in Precolonial Congo & Rwanda. He deconstructs static views of royal dynasties/chronologies, comments on the legacy of Des Forges, and discusses changes in the writing of African history.

Episode 61: ‘Holy Hustlers’, Freud, and African Wisdom Diviners

annette — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:32:02 +0000

Anthropologist Richard Werbner (University of Manchester) on the similarity between Freud and African wisdom diviners, ethnographic filmmaking in southern Africa, and the place of ‘Holy Hustlers’ (pentecostal churches and prophecy in Botswana) — the subject of his latest book – in the public sphere.

Episode 60: The Atlantic Slave Data Network

c92scott — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:15:52 +0000

Historians Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and Walter Hawthorne on Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network — a digital history project of Matrix and the MSU History Department funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. They discuss the origins of the ASDN, intellectual and technological challenges, and the wider significance of building a freely accessible web database on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World.

Episode 59: Layering Racial Oppression in South Africa

c92scott — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:40:29 +0000

Jacob Dlamini, South African author, journalist, and historian, on his best-selling book Native Nostalgia, a memoir that challenges conventional struggle narratives. He also discusses the social and political history of Kruger National Park and a new research project on collaborators of the apartheid security forces.

Episode 58: African Women in Politics

c92scott — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:26:40 +0000

Aili Mari Tripp (U. of Wisconsin – Madison and ASA President ) on African women’s movements and paradoxes of power in Museveni’s Uganda. Includes discussion of democratization and highlights the need for the African Studies Association to challenge the U.S. government’s draconian cuts to international education. With guest host Prof. Kiki Edozie (International Relations, Michigan State).

Episode 57: African Activists

c92scott — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:14:29 +0000

Eddie Daniels and Christine Root on spending a lifetime working for African liberation; Daniels in South Africa, where he was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island (1964-79), and Root in the U.S. as Associate Director of the Washington Office on Africa in solidarity with such struggles. The African Activist Archive preserves records and memories of ordinary Americans’ support for Africans’ fight against colonialism and apartheid.

Episode 56: The Great Dance: Masks in Malawi

c92scott — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:53:32 +0000

Dr. Gary Morgan, MSU Museum Director, on African masks and the Great Dance (Gule Wamkulu) in Chewa society, Malawi. Discusses origins and characters of Gule Wamkulu, and gender, political, educational and health aspects of masks and their future in a globalizing world. Accompanies MSU exhibition on masks and the first major book on Gule Wamkulu with Claude Boucher of KuNgoni Centre of Culture and Art, Mua, Malawi.

Photo: Greya character (copyright Gary Morgan)

Episode 55: African Archives, Past & Present

c92scott — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:44:10 +0000

Derek Peterson (University of Michigan) on the politics and practice of archives in East Africa, the precarious state of some archives, and exciting possibilities of preservation and digitization at Mountains of the Moon University in Uganda; “homespun” historians in Recasting the African Past and Mau Mau prisons in Kenya; and his forthcoming book Pilgrims & Patriots: Conversion, Dissent, & the Making of Civil Societies in East Africa.

Episode 54: Political Biography

c92scott — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:44:07 +0000

Heather Hughes (University of Lincoln) on her new biography of John Langalibalele Dube, founding president of the African National Congress of South Africa, which celebrates its centenary in 2012. Hughes focuses on Dube’s rich connections to the United States; his educational work and political beliefs; and the previously overlooked role of Nokutela Dube.