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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Postcolonial African cinema

        Ten directors

        by David Murphy, Patrick Williams

        This is the first introduction of its kind to an important cross-section of postcolonial African filmmakers from the 1950s to the present. Building on previous critical work in the field, this volume will bring together ideas from a range of disciplines - film studies, African cultural studies, and, in particular, postcolonial studies - in order to combine the in-depth analysis of individual films and bodies of work by individual directors with a sustained interrogation of these films in relation to important theoretical concepts. Structurally, the book is straightforward, though the aim is to incorporate diversity and complexity of approach within the overall simplicity of format. Chapters provide both an overview of the director's output to date, and the necessary background - personal or national, cultural or political - to enable readers to achieve a better understanding of the director's choice of subject matter, aesthetic or formal strategies, or ideological stance. They also offer a particular reading of one or more films, in which the authors aim to situate African cinema in relation to important critical and theoretical debates. This book thus constitutes a new departure in African film studies, recognising the maturity of the field, and the need for complex yet accessible approaches to it, which move beyond the purely descriptive while refusing to get bogged down in theoretical jargon. Consequently, the volume should be of interest not only to specialists but also to the general reader.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2021

        African cities and collaborative futures

        Urban platforms and metropolitan logistics

        by Michael Keith, Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, Susan Parnell

        This groundbreaking volume brings together scholars from across the globe to discuss the infrastructure, energy, housing, safety and sustainability of African cities, as seen through local narratives of residents. Drawing on a variety of fields and extensive first-hand research, the contributions offer a fresh perspective on some of the most pressing issues confronting urban Africa in the twenty-first century. At a time when the future of the region as a whole will be determined in large part by its cities, the implications of these developments are profound. With case studies from cities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania, this volume explores how the rapid growth of African cities is reconfiguring the relationship between urban social life and its built forms. While the most visible transformations in cities today can be seen as infrastructural, these manifestations are cultural as well as material, reflecting the different ways in which the city is rationalised, economised and governed. How can we 'see like a city' in twenty-first-century Africa, understanding the urban present to shape its future? This is the central question posed throughout this volume, with a practical focus on how academics, local decision makers and international practitioners can collaborate to meet the challenge of rapid growth, environmental pressures and resource gaps.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2021

        The Pan-African Pantheon

        by Adekeye Adebajo

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2021

        African peace

        by Kathryn Nash

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2010

        Representing Africa

        Landscape, exploration and empire in Southern Africa, 1780–1870

        by John McAleer, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie

        Southern Africa played a varied but vital role in Britain's maritime and imperial stories: it was one of the most intricate pieces in the British imperial strategic jigsaw, and representations of southern African landscape and maritime spaces reflect its multifaceted position. Representing Africa examines the ways in which British travellers, explorers and artists viewed southern Africa in a period of evolving and expanding British interest in the region. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, contemporary travelogues and visual images, many of which have not previously been published in this context, this book posits landscape as a useful prism through which to view changing British attitudes towards Africa. Richly illustrated, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in British, African, imperial and exploration history, art history, and landscape and environment studies. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        April 2011

        Postnationalist African Cinemas

        by Alexie Tcheuyap

        Postnationalist African cinemas convincingly interrogates the ways in which African narratives locate postcolonial identities and forms beyond essentially nationalist frameworks. It investigates how the emergence of new genres, discourses and representations, all unrelated to an overtly nationalist project, influences the formal choices made by contemporary directors. By foregrounding the narrative, generic, discursive, representational and aesthetic structures of films, this book shows how directors are beginning to regard film as a popular form of entertainment rather than political praxis. Tcheuyap investigates filmic genres such as comedy, dance, crime and epic alongside cultural aspects including witchcraft, sexuality, pornography and oracles. ;

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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        October 2017

        4 saints in 3 acts

        A snapshot of the American avant-garde in the 1930s

        by Patricia Allmer, John Sears

        Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson was a major avant-garde phenomenon of the 1930s, an experimental opera that nonetheless achieved remarkable popular success. Photography was a key element of that success, but its complex roles in the construction, representation and dissemination of the opera have hitherto received little critical attention. The photographic recording of the all-African American cast in particular affords a unique insight into the complexities of Four Saints in relation to the Harlem Renaissance and the New York avant-gardes of the time. This book, published in collaboration with The Photographers' Gallery, London, presents a wide selection of photographs of the cast, performances, and other material - many images reproduced for the first time - alongside essays by an international range of scholars exploring different aspects of the opera, including dance, fashion, music, and avant-garde writing, as well as photography.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2024

        A savage song

        Racist violence and armed resistance in the early twentieth-century U.S.–Mexico Borderlands

        by Margarita Aragon

        This book examines key moments in which collective and state violence invigorated racialized social boundaries around Mexican and African Americans in the United States, and in which they violently contested them. Bringing anti-Mexican violence into a common analytical framework with anti-black violence, A savage song examines several focal points in this oft-ignored history, including the 1915 rebellion of ethnic Mexicans in South Texas, and its brutal repression by the Texas Rangers and the 1917 mutiny of black soldiers of the 24th Infantry Regiment in Houston, Texas, in response to police brutality. Aragon considers both the continuities and stark contrasts across these different moments: how were racialized constructions of masculinity differently employed? How did African and Mexican American men, including those in uniform, respond to the violence of racism? And how was their resistance, including their claims to manhood and nation, understood by law enforcement, politicians, and the press? Building on extensive archival research, the book examines how African and Mexican American men have been constructed as 'racial problems', investigating, in particular, their relationship with law enforcement and ideas about black and Mexican criminality.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2021

        The Irish tower house

        Society, economy and environment, c. 1300–1650

        by Victoria L. McAlister

        The Irish tower house examines the social role of castles in late-medieval and early modern Ireland. It uses a multidisciplinary methodology to uncover the lived experience of this historic culture, demonstrating the interconnectedness of society, economics and the environment. Of particular interest is the revelation of how concerned pre-modern people were with participation in the economy and the exploitation of the natural environment for economic gain. Material culture can shed light on how individuals shaped spaces around themselves, and tower houses, thanks to their pervasiveness in medieval and modern landscapes, represent a unique resource. Castles are the definitive building of the European Middle Ages, meaning that this book will be of great interest to scholars of both history and archaeology.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        The South African War reappraised

        by Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        The South African War was a catalyst in the creation of modern South Africa and was a major international event which had profound implications for British rule in other parts of their colonial empire. This was South Africa's own 'Great War' - the largest conflict waged by the British in the century between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War. It shaped political discourse among South Africa's various communities and moulded the outlook of a generation of imperial administrators, soldiers and anti-colonial activists. The war launched South Africa as a moral issue of global significance, involving leading humanitarians, foreign 'pro-Boer' volunteers as well as pro-imperial contingents from various dominions and colonies of settlement, and would later find echoes in the campaign against apartheid. This volume includes a historiographical review of a century of writing on the war. It examines South Africa's place in the imperial structure and reappraises its impact on imperial defence and the political identities of Africans, Asians, Boer commandos and Cape Afrikaners. An analysis of the role of the media and the effects of the war on nationalists in India, Ireland and the Dominions is also included. The South African War reappraised will be of particular interest to students of imperialism, modern South Africa, nationalism and the media.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        November 2023

        South African London

        by Andrea Thorpe

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2006

        Mourning becomes...

        Post/memory and commemoration of the concentration camps of the South African War 1899–1902

        by Elizabeth Stanley, Bertrand Taithe, Roger Cooter, Carolyn Steedman

        This fascinating work challenges many of the accepted facts about the concentration camps run by the British during the South African War. The author demonstrates that much of what we have traditionally understood about these camps originates the testimony which was solicited, selected and published by key women activists within Boer proto-nationalist circles. Using detailed archival evidence, she shows that much of the history of the camps results from a deliberate imposition of 'post/memory' - a process by which what was 'remembered' was shaped and reshaped to support the development of a racialised nationalist framework. Many of the camps' occupants died from successive epidemics of measles, typhoid, enteritis and pneumonia rather than deliberate ill-treatment, yet the book shows how mourning for those who died was overridden by state commemorative activities concerned with promoting pan-Boer nationalist aspirations. The innovative and groundbreaking approach of the author invites the reader to step into and explore with her the commemorative sites passed by nationalist land acts, which still powerfully mark the South African landscape. ;

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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Guardians of Empire

        The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers, C.1700-1964

        by Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie, David Killingray

        For imperialists, the concept of guardian is specifically to the armed forces that kept watch on the frontiers and in the heartlands of imperial territories. Large parts of Asia and Africa, and the islands of the Pacific and the Caribbean were imperial possessions. This book discusses how military requirements and North Indian military culture, shaped the cantonments and considers the problems posed by venereal diseases and alcohol, and the sanitary strategies pursued to combat them. The trans-border Pathan tribes remained an insistent problem in Indian defence between 1849 and 1947. The book examines the process by which the Dutch elite recruited military allies, and the contribution of Indonesian soldiers to the actual fighting. The idea of naval guardianship as expressed in the campaign against the South Pacific labour trade is examined. The book reveals the extent of military influence of the Schutztruppen on the political developments in the German protectorates in German South-West Africa and German East Africa. The U.S. Army, charged with defending the Pacific possessions of the Philippines and Hawaii, encountered a predicament similar to that of the mythological Cerberus. The regimentation of military families linked access to women with reliable service, and enabled the King's African Rifles to inspire a high level of discipline in its African soldiers, askaris. The book explains the political and military pressures which drove successive French governments to widen the scope of French military operations in Algeria between 1954 and 1958. It also explores gender issues and African colonial armies.

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