Tag Archives: Popular Culture
Job post: Associate/Full Professor — Film, Digital/Print Media and/or Visual Culture — Fordham University
The Department of African and African American Studies at Fordham University invites applications for a tenured position in film, digital/print media, and/or visual culture at the Associate or Full Professor level, beginning August 2020, at the Lincoln Center Campus.
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 […]
Papa Wemba’s popularity
Here’s a link to an excellent background story from “the Beeb” on legendary Congolese musician Papa Wemba’s central role in the African music and culture scenes through six decades. I was not aware that he led the Sape movement, which has gotten some recent popular attention in the media over the last few years. He became […]
Ethical Access to “Music Time in Africa”
A recent NEH award of $260,000 to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor supports the digitization and online access to an archive of African popular music dating from the 1960s to the 1980s. It includes about 7,500 hours of audio recordings, program scripts and field notes. The materials were collected and created by Leo Sarkisian for the Voice of […]
Additional resources on Ebola
While the trends appear heartening on the ground with generally fewer new cases in West Africa, there’s still much work to be done (see US Centers for Disease Control update). Here, we offer a few additional resources to supplement earlier posts (including the Ebola Response pocket library on a flash drive offered by WiderNet). African Studies librarians […]
Kongo-Atlantic Dialogues
The 2014 Gwendolen M. Carter Conference, “Kongo-Atlantic Dialogues” will be held this coming Friday and Saturday, February 21-22 at the Harn Museum, in connection with the Harn’s superb Kongo Across the Waters exhibit. The conference includes distinguished international scholars in a range of disciplines as well a number of artists. The full program for Carter Conference […]
Matatu urban transit map of Nairobi
Beautiful map, important research. Researchers and students at the University of Nairobi, the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University, and the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT produced [an informal “matatu” urban transit] map – and the underlying data behind it – after carrying cell phones and GPS devices along every route in the […]
Fashion news from Africa: “I am the captain of my soul”
African fashion was recently highlighted in a Guinness beer television commercial. Even more surprisingly, it featured Congolese (Brazzaville) men promoting a strong message of personal worth and agency. As the narrator says, “with every brace and every cufflink we say, ‘I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.’” See: “Ad of the […]
Obituary for Tabu Ley Rochereau
Tabu Ley, “King of Congolese Rhumba” will be remembered at a funeral service today. A report at http://www.worldmusiccentral.org includes the following tribute: Throughout his career, Mr. Rochereau wrote some 3,000 songs and produced some 250 recordings. He also earned the Honorary Knight of Senegal and Officer of the National Order, the Republic of Chad during his […]
Comparative Approaches to Urban Africa
African Studies Association, Friday 4:45 p.m. “Past Perspectives, Future Vistas: Comparative Approaches to Urban Africa, pt. 2.” Session chaired by Stephen Marr. An interesting session highlighting a variety of current urban trends across Africa. Marr points out that this session is a sequel, but aspires to an “Empire Strikes Back” level rather than “Batman and […]
African Studies library 