Tag Archives: History
Scholarship out of Africa
“In his article, Writing history: flow and blockage in the circulation of knowledge, Dr. Steven Feierman, author and professor Emeritus at University of Pennsylvania wrote about the need for local scholars to be on the forefront of research in Africa.” — Quoted from Lee Walton at https://www.thirdchapter.org/scholarship-out-of-africa/
Digitized field recordings of Lorenzo Dow Turner
This newly available digital resource includes 40 hours of audio field recordings by the African American academic and linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner, the “Father of Gullah Studies,” relating to: African American History / Studies, Black History / Studies, Languages, Linguistics, Music and Music History. The recordings were made 1932-1952, relating to Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil and […]
The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin
Events this week celebrate the opening of an exhibit featuring 200 photographs of Ugandan president Idi Amin, together with film and radio material generated by the Amin government. The exhibition, curated by Nelson Abiti, Richard Vokes, Edgar Taylor and Derek Peterson, grows out of a very large trove of recently-discovered photographic negatives digitised at the Uganda […]
Archivists race to digitize slavery records before the history is lost
From PRI’s The World April 04, 2019 By Rupa Shenoy Listen here. The story includes an interview with Dr. Katrina Keefer of Trent University (in Canada), who came to realize that records of captured Africans’ facial scarification in African archives could help to identify the ethnic origins of African-Americans descended from enslaved people. The era of the trans-Atlantic slavery is […]
East Africa’s first ‘newspaper’
It has come to my attention that Msimulizi, a newspaper published from 1888 in Zanzibar (Tanzania), has been digitized and is now available in full text online. The catalog record from SOAS, University of London, includes the following contextual information: For historic context see: Sturmer, Martin. The Media history of Tanzania. (Ndanda, Tanzania : Ndanda […]
Shakespeare’s plea for tolerance towards immigrants
Recently heard, “history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” From the British Library: “At some point in the development of Sir Thomas More, Shakespeare seems to have been commissioned to write the play’s emotional highpoint, in which the heroic More – who is at this point in the play the sheriff of London – […]
Kinshasa street comic artist Papa Mfumu’eto’s papers the focus of international workshop
This week, February 8-10 the University of Florida, Center for African Studies’ 17th Gwendolen M. Carter Conference devotes a critical public forum to new methods and politics in curation and text-image studies. The focus is on a newly acquired vernacular manuscript collection under the curation of Dan Reboussin, and accessioned in the Department of Special and Area Studies Collections at […]
Battle of King Takla Haymant of Gojjam against the Dervishes
This stunning Ethiopian mural portrays the Battle of King Takla Haymanot of Gojjam against the Dervishes. Painted on cloth in 1881, it’s now located at the Harn Museum of Art and the image here is available in the Public domain. It’s also featured on the dust jacket of a book recently acquired for our collections: Takla […]
Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa by 1800: a map and a gazetteer.
A map of agricultural systems in Africa by 1800 Mats Widgren has announced on H-Africa the forthcoming publication of a new map of agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa to 1800 in: Widgren, Mats. (in press) “Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa by 1800: a map and a gazetteer.” In Mercuri, A.M., D’Andrea, A.C., Fornaciari, R., Höhn, A. (eds.). Plants and […]
Digitization of the Infa Yattara Family Library’s Timbuktu manuscripts
Dr. Ian Straughn of Brown University provides a glimpse into his work in Bamako, Mali to preserve manuscript cultural heritage materials through a pilot award (EAP913) from the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library. The libraries of Timbuktu, and the abundance of centuries-old manuscripts they contain, have consistently attracted the attention of international media during the past five years. […]
African Studies library 