Academic reparation and stepping aside
Reflections from a former President of the African Studies Association (ASA), the largest African Studies association globally, on the future of the discipline.
Reflections from a former President of the African Studies Association (ASA), the largest African Studies association globally, on the future of the discipline.
Despite increased global debate over refugee issues, few discuss these issues in terms of refugee histories, especially histories of Africans seeking refuge in and beyond the continent.
African Studies scholars write for the gate-keepers, to prove our own legitimacy, for the stimulation of conferences and the relief of rising recognition by algorithms.
Influence exhilarates. It also makes people nervous. Writers, artists, scholars, researchers—we all seem to want to be “influential.” Less often do we want to admit to being “influenced.”
Tanzanian universities are beginning to tackle “sextortion.” Will new policies and attention to sexual harassment on campuses make a difference?
David Graeber (1961-2020) started his career as a scholar studying Madagascar and that informed what became his popular ideas about anarchism, debt, and globalization.
What if you survey African literature professors to find out which works and writers are most regularly taught? Only a few canonical ones continue to dominate curricula.
We should honor Professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba by carrying on his life's work.
Il sied d’honorer le professeur Ernest Wamba dia Wamba en continuant l’œuvre de sa vie.
Tunapaswa kumheshimu Profesa Ernest Wamba dia Wamba kwa kuendelea na kazi ya maisha yake.
Ghana’s ruling party has proposed a new law to control the country’s public universities. The country’s academics are fighting it.
The Nigerian scholar and poet, Harry Garuba, who died in February 2020, was a key figure in African Studies and teaching literature in South Africa.
The journal’s editor acknowledges that it has a long way to go before most Africa-based scholars recognize it as an especially African journal.
Among the many legacies of Teju Olaniyan’s teaching and writing would be a project to not only speak in the ideological name of Africa, but to redistribute the power of speaking in that name.
The works of Frantz Fanon can be read as architectural renderings of rights, futures, and generations toward a “very different Afro-futurism.”
The world is out of joint and Immanuel Wallerstein, one of its great public intellectuals, has left us—albeit with tools to battle the dying kicks of capitalism.
What censorship about articles in a French journal tells us about the state of France-Africa relations, imperial legacies and the impact these have on the production of knowledge about Francophone Africa.
The passing of American economist Ann Seidman has again spotlighted the impacts of committed scholarship on Africa.
Africa and its peoples were central to the great Immanuel Wallerstein's intellectual development and political activism.
The experience of studying Africa in London makes the writers question the validity of "African Studies" as is currently taught in Britain.