Fronty, François. Dix films d’Afrique. Images plurielles, scène et écrans [Ten Movies from Africa: Plural Images, Scenes, and Screens]. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2019.

With a diversity of styles and approaches, the authors suggest that African movies question cinema through reversing their gaze: it no longer goes from global cinema to so-called African cinema but reflects on contemporary African cinema from an Africa “that is becoming”.

[Source: L’Harmattan, adapted and translated from French].

Gadijigo Samba

Professor, African Cinema, Mount Holyoke College

413-538-2255

sgadjigo@mtholyoke.edu

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/people/samba-gadjigo

‍

Gallery 1957

Art gallery

Accra, Ghana, and London, UK

https://www.gallery1957.com/

Description:

Gallery 1957 highlights leading West African artists  from both local and international perspectives, further bridging the gap  between audiences within and without Ghana.

Ganapathy, Maya. “Sidestepping the Political ‘Graveyard of Creativity’: Polyphonic Narratives and Re-envisioning the Nation-State in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.” Research in African Literatures 47, no. 3 (2016): 88–105. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.47.3.06.

Although critics of the contemporary anglophone African novel acknowledge its transnational themes, they often associate it with an individualism that is harmoniously reconciled with national responsibility and, therefore, the eventual rehabilitation of the state. These critics’ implicit valorization of the nation-state as a site of shared affective ties overlooks the African novel’s dismantling of a geographically and ideologically determined writerly identity. This essay argues that a narratological approach elucidates the outlines of an imagined state in the African realist novel and the challenges of imagining democracy. Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah links reform to inclusive social dialogue. Half of a Yellow Sun resuscitates this possibility through its structurally complex representation of authorship. Echoing Anthills, Adichie’s novel extends the role of national storyteller to peripheral voices and appears to forecast state rehabilitation. However, this image of inclusivity belies its desire to consolidate, in nationalistic terms, a volatile middle-class identity.

[Source: Article abstract].

Ganson, Brian, Mcleod, Herbert. Private Sector Development and Persistence of Fragility in Sierra Leone. Cambridge University Press. Business And Politics. Volume, 21.Special Issue, 4. Nov.  29, 2019.

Despite rhetoric equating foreign direct investment and business growth with escaping fragility in Sierra Leone, private sector development in the period from 2002 to 2014 worsened socio-political challenges. This study challenges existing practices and refines ideas about business-driven development in Sierra Leone and similar fragile states. By linking business's role in Sierra Leone with peacebuilding and state-building frameworks, it offers a fresh perspective on how private sector development functions in persistently fragile contexts, laying the groundwork for further theoretical propositions about business-state relations in aiding transitions from fragility to peaceful development.

Source: Adapted from article's abstract

Garlake, Peter S. Early Art and Architecture of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

This new history of over 5,000 years of African art reveals its true diversity for the first time. Challenging centuries of misconceptions that have obscured the sophisticated nature of African art, Garlake focuses on seven key regions – southern Africa, Nubia, Aksum, the Niger River, West Africa, Great Zimbabwe, and the East African coast – treating each in detail and setting them in their social and historical context. Garlake is long familiar with and has extensive practical experience of both the archaeology and the art history of Africa. Using the latest research and archaeological findings, he offers exciting new insights into the works native to these areas, and he also puts forth new interpretations of several key cultures and monuments. Acknowledging the universal allure of the African art object, this book helps to understand more about the ways in which this art was produced, used, and received.

[Source: Barnes and Nobles]

Carmela Garritano

Associate Professor, African cinema, Texas A&M University

(979) 845-2124

cgarritano@tamu.edu

https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/ints/profile/carmela-garritano/

Garritano, Carmela. African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History. Athens, OH: Center for International Studies Ohio University, 2013.

African Video Movies and Global Desires is the first full-length scholarly study of Ghana’s commercial video industry, an industry that has produced thousands of movies over the last twenty years and has grown into an influential source of cultural production. Produced and consumed under circumstances of dire shortage and scarcity, African video movies narrate the desires and anxieties created by Africa’s incorporation into the global cultural economy. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research conducted in Ghana over a ten-year period, as well as close readings of a number of individual movies, this book brings the insights of historical context as well as literary and film analysis to bear on a range of movies and the industry as a whole. Garritano makes a significant contribution to the examination of gender norms and the ideologies these movies produce. African Video Movies and Global Desires is a historically and theoretically informed cultural history of an African visual genre that will only continue to grow in size and influence.

Source: Book Description