The politics of influence
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.”
Academy
The university of patriarchy
Tanzanian universities are beginning to tackle “sextortion.” Will new policies and attention to sexual harassment on campuses make a difference?
David Graeber, Africanist
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.
African literature is a country
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.
Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, a healer from within
We should honor Professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba by carrying on his life's work.
Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, un guérisseur de l’esprit
Il sied d’honorer le professeur Ernest Wamba dia Wamba en continuant l’œuvre de sa vie.
Ernest Wamba dia Wamba mponyaji kutoka ndani
Tunapaswa kumheshimu Profesa Ernest Wamba dia Wamba kwa kuendelea na kazi ya maisha yake.
Ghana’s retrogressive Public Universities Bill
Ghana’s ruling party has proposed a new law to control the country’s public universities. The country’s academics are fighting it.
What does it mean to be African in a post-apartheid academy?
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.
How African is the ‘African Studies Review’?
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.
Reenchanting Teju Olaniyan
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.
Fanon’s mission
The works of Frantz Fanon can be read as architectural renderings of rights, futures, and generations toward a “very different Afro-futurism.”
A worthy ancestor
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.
The imperial legacy in scholarship
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.
A living monument of the struggle
The passing of American economist Ann Seidman has again spotlighted the impacts of committed scholarship on Africa.
How Africa shaped Immanuel Wallerstein
Africa and its peoples were central to the great Immanuel Wallerstein's intellectual development and political activism.
There is no Africa in African studies
The experience of studying Africa in London makes the writers question the validity of "African Studies" as is currently taught in Britain.
Zionism and global African studies
Delegates to 'Global Africa' at Oxford University write about how Zionists and their apologists target the academy.
How not to change a curriculum
One of South Africa's leading universities, UCT, released a curriculum change framework post-#RhodeMustFall. This is a critique by two alum.
Invisible voices in the production of knowledge
In the Bukavu Series, researchers from two Congolese and two European universities explore how they interrogate violence in the DRC.