Research in African Literatures

Tri-annual Peer-reviewed academic  journal on African Literary Studies

Indiana

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/179391

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Reynolds, Jonathan T., 1997. "The Politics of History." Journal of Asian and African Studies 32, 1-2 (1997): 50-65,doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685217-90007281

The influence of religion in Nigerian politics can be traced in particular to the Islamic/political legacy of the nineteenth century Sokoto Caliphate. The legacy of this Islamic state has dramatically influenced Nigerian politics, which became particularly evident during the period of political activity in the 1950s and the subsequent events that stemmed from this activity. The Sokoto Caliphate as a model of government in northern Nigeria was in fact problematic because it only represented part of an historical tradition that was strongly affected by violence and resistance to Islamic expansion. Hence the Caliphate has been a source of tension rather than integration at the national level.

(Source: article abstract).

Joan Ricart-Huguet

Assistant Professor, Political Science, Loyola University, Maryland

Contact: jricart-huguet@loyola.edu

Ricart-Huguet, Joan. “Colonial Education, Political Elites, and Regional Political Inequality in Africa”. Comparative Political Studies, 54(14),(2021) 2546–2580.

The author asks what factors determine regional representation in government cabinets, with case studies from 16 countries between 1929 and 2010. She argues that ministers are not chosen to represent all regions equally, nor are they chosen in proportion to the population of regions. Instead, she argues that regions with the greatest share of primary education in the colonial period gain outsized representation in the civil service and this in turn leads to outsized representation in cabinet. Cases are drawn from West and East Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi

Ricci, Daniela, and Melissa Thackway, eds. African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2020.

African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction analyzes the aesthetic strategies adopted by contemporary African diasporic filmmakers to express the reconstruction of identity. Having left the continent, these filmmakers see Africa as a site of representation and cultural circulation. The diasporic experience displaces the center and forges new syncretic identities. Through migratory movement, people become foreigners, Others - and in this instance, black. The African diasporic condition in the Western world is characterized by the intersection of various factors: being African and bearing the historical memory of the continent; belonging to a black minority in majority-white societies; and finally, having historically been the object of negative, stereotyped representation. As a result, quests for the self and self-reconstruction are frequent themes in the films of the African diaspora, and yet the filmmakers refuse to remain trapped in the confines of an assigned, rigid identity. Reflecting these complex circumstances, this book analyzes the contemporary diaspora through the prism of cultural hybridization and the processes of recomposing fragmented identities, out of which new identities emerge.

[Source: Michigan State University Press].

Afua Rida

Fashion Influencer

Ghana

instagram.com/afuarida/?hl=en

Rijk  van Dijk

Professor, Anthropology, African Studies  Centre, Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Contact:

r.a.van.dijk@asc.leidenuniv.nl

Lorena Rizzo

Senior Lecturer, African History, African Photography, University of Basel

Rheinsprung 21, 4051 Basel, Schweiz 

Tel. +41 61 207 34 87

lorena.rizzo@unibas.ch

https://zasb.unibas.ch/en/persons/lorena-rizzo/

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