African Studies Blog

The Encyclopedia of African Religion edited by Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama is a new electronic reference title that has been added to the collection. It can be accessed through the libraries’ ALICE online catalog or from InfoTree. Here is an excerpt from the introduction.

“The Encyclopedia of African Religion is the first comprehensive work to assemble ideas, concepts, discourses, and extensive essays on African religion. Over the years, there have been numerous encyclopedias on religion from other parts of the world, but African religion has often been relegated to “primitive religions,” “African mythologies,” or “tribal religions” sections of such works on religion. It is as if African religion is an afterthought in the eyes of the authors and editors of such volumes. Of course, these designations are clearly based on outmoded and problematic Western notions of Africa, and we have created this encyclopedia as a monument to the memory of those Africans who left us enough information from which to rediscover for the world the original beauty and majesty of African culture.”

The New York Times and The Washington Post report on South Africa as the people go to the polls today to vote for a new government. There is a general feeling of disappointment amongst the people for the lack of jobs, deplorable living conditions and the high crime rate. A recent poll showed fewer than half the people felt they were better off now than they were under apartheid yet it is expected that the ANC which has ruled the country since the end of apartheid will win the election in a land slide.

Read it at the New York Times

Read it at The Washington Post

Source: H-Net

Alexander Rödlach. Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS & Cultures of Blame in Africa. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2006. 272 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-59874-034-9.

Reviewed by Melissa Graboyes (Department of History, Boston University)
Published on H-Africa (April, 2009)
Commissioned by Mark L. Lilleleht

Public Health Workers Listen Up: AIDS, Prevention, and Origins in Zimbabwe

At many schools of public health, when a professor asks how an AIDS program in Africa should be run, hands shoot up. The answer is obvious. It must be “culturally sensitive.” Few, if any, details are ever given about what aspects of culture a program should be sensitive to, and rarely is a specific place even mentioned. The important thing is to be sensitive to local ideas–a belief simplistically carried away upon graduation.

For better or worse, many public health graduates end up running international health programs, though before jetting off to southern Africa with a photo of Paul Farmer tucked in their bags, they ought to be handed a copy of Alexander Rödlach’s Witches, Westerners, and HIV, an ethnography with practical implications and full of fine detail. What the author brings to a discussion about AIDS in Africa is specificity of place and culture, plenty of experience in both, and an unwillingness to hide behind too much theory. As a Catholic priest stationed in Plumtree and Bulawayo, he spent nearly a decade living in Zimbabwe in his dual capacity as priest and anthropologist. He is a conscientious researcher and he knows his subject matter.

The book is divided into four parts: “The Cultural Life of HIV/AIDS,” “HIV/AIDS and Sorcery,” ”HIV/AIDS and Conspiracy,” and “The Implications of Culture.” There are a total of ten brief chapters, none of which are burdened with too many endnotes, and all of which can be read independently. More…

Source: H-Net

Sylviane A. Diouf. Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Story of the Clotilda and the Last Enslaved Africans Brought to America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 416 pp. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-531104-4.

Reviewed by Nana Yaw B. Sapong (Department of History, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale)
Published on H-Africa (April, 2009)
Commissioned by Mark L. Lilleleht

All Good Men and Women Try to Forget: They Have Forgotten!

In the summer of 2007, I paid a visit to an old haunt of mine: Ghana’s Cape Coast castle. Standing on a battlement with neatly arranged canons and cannonballs, the waves came crashing incessantly and showered me with fine spray. In addition to the sound of seagulls, the waves carried other voices to me: the soul-wrenching melancholic cries of fear, despair, and uncertainty. The Cape Coast castle was a major European fortress that held slaves before their departure to the New World. Readers will hear these voices as they read Sylviane A. Diouf’s Dreams of Africa in Alabama. This book is a fine addition to existing narratives of the saga of the transatlantic slave trade and its effects on people and cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a reconstruction of the lives of the last documented group of enslaved Africans shipped to the United States, their courage and resilience, and their hopes of returning to their ancestral homes one day. To them, the New World was just a transient experience. More…

The World Digital Library has been launched on the Internet. It is a collection of primary documents on all subjects and authoritative explanations from the  leading libraries in the world. The WDL focuses on significant primary materials, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other types of primary sources.  The content is in a variety of formats and languages, from different places and time periods including 122 items from Africa

The WDL was developed by a team at the U.S. Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries.  It is the supported by the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the financial support of a number of companies and private foundations.

The New York Times Magazine has an interesting article describing a reverse missionary movement from Africa to North America, as an example of the shifting of Christianity’s center of gravity from the North to the south. It describes the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Nigerian church’s efforts  in building a vast missionary network in more than a 100 countries including a detailed description of its activities in the United States.

Read the Full story

Wednesday April 15

Joe Miller on “State of African Studies”

Dr. JosePH Miller is Senior Fellow at the Center for Historical Research at Ohio State University and professor of history at the University of Virginia. He will be visiting Ohio University April 15 – 17. On Wednesday, April 15 Dr. Miller will talk to the African Studies community about the state of African Studies and African History as disciplines. He has served as president of the American Historical Association (1998) and the African Studies Association (2005-06).

Where: Bentley Hall Room 135

Time: Noon

Thursday April 16

African Studies Brown Bag

Dr. Mbugua wa Mungai, Center for Folklore Studies, Ohio State University, will present on: “Atoti, Karumaindo and Twist: The Construction of Gender in Kenyan Popular Culture”.

Where: Yamada International House Seminar Room

Time: Noon -1:00

PBS Independent Lens series will be showing two new Africa films in the next two weeks on WOUB CHANNEL 20.

 Milking the Rhino

Friday, April 10, 9:00pm

Monday, April 13, 2:00am

Synopsis: The film is about community-based conservation efforts in Africa. It examines the deepening conflict between rural Africans and animals in the ever-shrinking African wilderness.

For more information check Independent Lens.

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai (2007)

Friday, April 17, 9:00pm

Monday, April 20, 2:00am

Synopsis: The film tells the story of Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner who through the simple act of planting trees sparked a powerful political crusade to protect the environment, women’s rights, and democracy.

For more information on this documentary film check Independent Lens and Africa Media Program for reviews.

Source:CNN

Rwanda marked the 15th anniversary of the start of a 100-day genocidal massacre in which an estimated 800,000 people were brutally killed.  Rwandan President Paul Kagame addressed thousands of Rwandans and criticized the international community for not doing more to prevent the bloody wave of violence.

Full Story

Source:CNN

“In any society, if there is no regulation, if there is no control, you will always get greedy and selfish people who are prepared to take the economy very far for their own selfish ends,”  Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai of Kenya told CNN in an interview on the phone ahead of the launch of her new book;  ”The Challenge for Africa,” in the U.S. this week.

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