Research Africa News: January 15th, 2020
Volume 3, Issue 3– December, 2019
The Third Issue of Research Africa Reviews, Volume 3, was published in early January 2020. The reviews may be found on the Research Africa Reviews website.
Open Call for Papers
The 4th AEGIS Thematic Conference on Africa in the Indian Ocean is planned to take place at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, on 23-24 April 2020.
Like the previous thematic conferences, we are bringing together researchers from Europe, Africa and Asia working on Africa in the Indian Ocean, with the aim of expanding the network of the AEGIS Collaborative Research Group on Africa in the Indian Ocean (CRG-AIO), and of producing an international peer-reviewed publication, either in the form of a book or a special issue of an Africanist journal.
The general theme of the two-day Conference is “New Gulf Streams – Middle East and Eastern Africa intersected”, and is organised in interdisciplinary thematic panels focussing on the interconnections between Horn of Africa & Eastern Africa societies and the Middle East countries, with a special focus on the challenges of recent geopolitical, religious and economic ties between these regions.
Read the details for proposals here
A Database of Fugitive Slave Ads Reveals Thousands of Untold Resistance Stories
Freedom on the Move from Cornell University is the first major digital database of fugitive slave ads from North America.
Readers of the May 24, 1796 Pennsylvania Gazette found an advertisement offering ten dollars to any person who would apprehend Oney Judge, an enslaved woman who had fled from President George Washington’s Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon.
Read the details in this link here
This Saharan Village Is Home to Thousands of Ancient Texts Preserved in Desert Libraries
By Jessica Stewart on August 8, 2019
Nestled in the Sahara, the medieval village of Chinguetti in Mauritania is an incredible jewel of Berber culture. Once an important outpost on trade and pilgrimage routes, the desert village contains wonderful examples of Berber Saharan architecture. It is also an important center of learning thanks to its desert libraries, which are filled with scientific and Qur’anic texts dating to the Middle Ages.
Read the details in this link here
Who Is Competing to Own Researcher Identity?
By Roger C. Schonfeldjan 6, 2020
Tweet Share 2 Pin Buffer Share 2SHARES PRINT THIS PAGE The largest scholarly publishers today are driven by one major near-term strategic concern — to reduce leakage and thereby bolster the value of the subscription bundle. But while they work belatedly to address this priority through Seamless Access (RA21), GetFTR, and even partnerships with ResearchGate, the savviest of them are keeping their eyes on the true structural transformation that the internet has wrought. We are witnessing the transformation away from a journal-centric model of scholarly publishing towards a researcher-centric model of scholarly communication. Success in this new environment requires engagement with researcher identity, which is a struggle even for most of the largest publishing houses. Who is competing to own researcher identity and how can other publishers engage this vital role?
Read the details in this link here.
The Emperor from Africa
It is tranquil these days at the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus in Leptis Magna, on the coast of Libya. The cube of white marble, scooped through by four arches and decorated with friezes of Septimius and his family, stands like a museum piece on the city’s southern edge. But it’s easy to imagine dusty foot, hoof and cart traffic bustling around the edifice some 18 centuries ago when the arch straddled the coast road running west to Carthage, in what is now Tunisia, and the road south into the Sahara. Like many of the city’s magnificent ruins, the arch speaks to the power and resourcefulness of the first African to rule the Roman Empire. Septimius, who ruled from 193 to 211 CE, was the 18th emperor in a line dating back to Julius Caesar in the first century BCE.
Read the rest of the story in this link.
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Ethiopia’s Wildlife Treasures
[ثروة الحيوانات البرية في اثيوبيا]
Author (Editor): Håkan Pohlstrand
Ethiopia is a treasure trove of wildlife secrets that are to be discovered, marvelled and preserved. The diversity of mammals and birds have evolved because of the unique geographic conditions of the land: highland forests, lofty plateaus, dense jungles, fertile valleys, parches pans, and the Great Rift Valley that splits the country in the middle. Ethiopia is a huge country with rare animals such as the elusive Dibatag and the endemic Walia Ibex. Nearly every year, a new species is discovered. Recognition and appreciation of the diversity and extraordinary number of endemics in Ethiopia is needed to keep these treasures for future generations. Understanding and finding a healthy balance between the needs for habitat preservation for wildlife as well as human populations is an important key if Ethiopia has hopes of keeping her treasures..
Publisher: Shama Books, Ethiopia, 2019.
The Algerian War Retold: Of Camus’s Revolt and Postwar Revolt
[اعادة رواية الحرب الجزائرية: تمرد كاموس و مسألة ثورة ما بعد الحرب]
Author: Meaghan Emery
The Algerian War Retold: Of Camus’s Revolt and Postwar Reconciliation focuses on specific aspects of Albert Camus’s ethical thought through a study of his writings in conjunction with late 20th- and early 21st-century works written by Franco-Maghrebi authors on the topic of the Algerian War (1954-1962). It combines historical inquiry with literary analysis in order to examine the ways in which Camus’s concept of revolt — in his novels, journalistic writing, and philosophical essays — reverberates in productions pertaining to that war. Following an examination of Sartre’s and Camus’s debate over revolution and violence, one that in another iteration asks whether FLN-sponsored terrorism was justified, The Algerian War Retold uncovers how today’s writers have adopted paradigms common to both Sartre’s and Camus’s oeuvres when seeking to break the silence and influence France’s national narrative. In the end, it attempts to answer the critical questions raised by literary acts of violence, including whether Camusian ethics ultimately lead to justice for the Other in revolt. These questions are particularly poignant in view of recent presidential declarations in response to years of active pressure applied by associations and other citizens’ groups, prompting the French government to acknowledge the state’s abandonment of the harkis, condemn the repression of peaceful protest, and recognize the French army’s systematic use of torture in Algeria..
Publisher: Routledge 2019.
Alienation and Freedom
[الاغتراب والحرية]
Author: Frantz Fanon Editor(s): Jean Khalfa, Robert J. C. Young Translator: Steven Corcoran.
Since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth in 1961, Fanon’s work has been deeply significant for generations of intellectuals and activists from the 60s to the present day. Alienation and Freedom collects together unpublished works comprising around half of his entire output – which were previously inaccessible or thought to be lost. This book introduces audiences to a new Fanon, a more personal Fanon and one whose literary and psychiatric works, in particular, take centre stage. These writings provide new depth and complexity to our understanding of Fanon’s entire oeuvre revealing more of his powerful thinking about identity, race and activism which remain remarkably prescient. Shedding new light on the work of a major 20th-century philosopher, this disruptive and moving work will shape how we look at the world.
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2018.
African Catholic: Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church.
[الكاثوليكية الأفريقية: التحرر من الاستعمار واعادة هيكلة الكنيسة]
Author: Elizabeth A. Foster,
……
Publisher: Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019.
The Politics of Disease Control: Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890–1920
[سياسة الحد من الأمراض: تاريخ مرض النوم القهري في شرق إفريقيا 1890-1920]
Author: Mari K. Webel
Webel draws case studies from colonial Burundi, Tanzania, and Uganda to frame her arguments within a zone of vigorous mobility and exchange in eastern Africa, where African states engaged with the Belgian, British, and German empires. Situating sleeping sickness control within African intellectual worlds and political dynamics, The Politics of Disease Control connects responses to sleeping sickness with experiences of historical epidemics such as plague, cholera, and smallpox, demonstrating important continuities before and after colonial incursion. African strategies to mitigate disease, Webel shows, fundamentally shaped colonial disease prevention programs in a crucial moment of political and social change.
Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2019
Zimbolicious Anthology: An Anthology of Zimbabwean Literature and Arts, Vol 4
[مختارات زيمبوليس: مختارات الأدب والفن الزيمبابوي ، المجلد 4]
Author (Editor): Tendai Rinos Mwanaka, Jabulani Mzinyathi
The latest Zimbolicious offering has nonfiction, poetry, an interview, fiction and incisive visual art. Works were received from regular contributors and relatively new artists. The poets with their collective audacious eye keenly observe society and reveal the pimples, warts and all that is afflicting the society; talk about the dying, already dead and decaying Zimbabwean currency or nonexistent currency, the emancipation of women, the grinding poverty and the political challenges Zimbabwe faces. Others deal with spirituality and religion, love, growing up without a father figure. Nonfiction work leaves one under a barrage of questions: What it means to be a Zimbabwean, the defining and dissecting of Zimbabwe’s literature, writing, self-publishing are put under serious scrutiny. Some delicious slices of the scenic Zimbabwean landscape are featured and a continuation in investigating what home is in a selection of visual art pieces The fiction is speculative, bittersweet and stays on your mind like a memory of that long, long forgotten summer of love as each fictionist deal with issues related to relationships, love, the lack of, the impermanence of which is an ever recurring leitmotiv in these works, thus therefore, this Zimbolicious is a must read, robust, incisive collection of Zimbabwean Literature and the arts.
Publisher: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Zimbabwe, 2019.
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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.
