Africa Past & Present

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.

Episode 53: The Impact of US government cuts on African Studies

c92scott — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:54:08 +0000

David Wiley, James Pritchett, Laura Mitchell, and Joshua Grace discuss huge federal government cuts to Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs and their impact on African Studies in the United States.

Episode 52: Zulu Intellectual History

c92scott — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:11:38 +0000

Hlonipha Mokoena (Anthropology, Columbia U.) on her new book: Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (2011). Explains the rise of a black intelligentsia in 19th- and early 20th-century South Africa through the remarkable life of Fuze, the first Zulu-speaker to publish a book in the language: Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona / The Black People and Whence They Came.

Episode 51: Maasai Women, Culture, and the Indigenous Rights Movement

c92scott — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:22:32 +0000

Dorothy Hodgson (Anthropology, Rutgers) on Maasai pastoralists in Tanzania, with a focus on the experiences and perspectives of women. She discusses the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and Christianity, and then turns to the subject of her new book, Being Maasai, Becoming Indigenous, which explores local activists’ engagement with the transnational indigenous rights movement.

Episode 50: Political Change in Africa and the Diaspora

c92scott — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:29:22 +0000

Horace Campbell (African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse U.) on political change in Africa and the Diaspora. Focus is on the revolution in Libya, popular revolts, war, peace, and neo-liberalism in Africa and beyond. Campbell also shares insights from his new book: Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA.