
African Studies Association (ASA)
Featured NEW Books
Imaging Culture
Photography in Mali, West Africa
Published by: Indiana University Press
Imaging Culture is a sociohistorical study of the meaning, function, and aesthetic significance of photography in Mali, West Africa, from the 1930s to the present. Spanning the dynamic periods of colonialism, national independence, socialism, and democracy, its analysis focuses on the studio and documentary work of professional urban photographers, particularly in the capital city of Bamako and in smaller cities such as Mopti and Ségu.
Featuring the work of more than twenty-five photographers, it concentrates on those who have been particularly influential for the local development and practice of the medium as well as its international popularization and active participation in the contemporary art market.
Imaging Culture looks at how local aesthetic ideas are visually communicated in the photographers' art and argues that though these aesthetic arrangements have specific relevance for local consumers, they transcend geographical and cultural boundaries to have value for contemporary global audiences as well.
Imaging Culture is an important and visually interesting book which will become a standard source for those who study African photography and its global impact.
Jay Pather, Performance, and Spatial Politics in South Africa
Published by: Indiana University Press
Jay Pather, Performance and Spatial Politics in South Africa offers the first full-length monograph on the award-winning choreographer, theater director, curator, and creative artist in contemporary global performance. Working within the contexts of African studies, dance, theater, and performance, Ketu H. Katrak explores the extent of Pather's productive career but also places him and his work in the South African and global arts scene, where he is considered a visionary.
Pather, a South African of Indian heritage, is known as a master of space, site, and location. Katrak examines how Pather's performance practices place him in the center of global trends that are interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and multimedia and that cross borders between dance, theater, visual art, and technology.
Jay Pather, Performance and Spatial Politics in South Africa offers a vision of an artist who is strategically aware of the spatiality of human life, who understands the human body as the nation's collective history, and who is a symbol of hope and resilience after the trauma of violent segregation.
Sharing the Burden of Sickness
A History of Healing and Medicine in Accra
Published by: Indiana University Press
In Sharing the Burden of Sickness, Jonathan Roberts examines the history of the healing cultures in Accra, Ghana. When people are sick in Accra, they can pursue a variety of therapeutic options. West African traditional healers, spiritual healers from the Islamic and Christian traditions, Western clinical medicine, and an open marketplace of over-the-counter medicine provide ample means to promote healing and preventing sickness. Each of these healing cultures had a historical point of arrival in the city of Accra, and Roberts tells the story of how they intertwined and how patients and healers worked together in their struggle against disease.
By focusing on the medical history of one place, Roberts details how urban development, colonization, decolonization, and independence brought new populations to the city, where they shared their ideas about sickness and health.
Sharing the Burden of Sickness explores medical history during important periods in Accra's history. Roberts not only introduces readers to a wide range of ideas about health but also charts a course for a thoroughly pluralistic culture of healing in the future, especially with the spread of new epidemics of HIV/AIDS and ebola.
Thomas Sankara
A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers the first complete biography in English of the dynamic revolutionary leader from Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. Coming to power in 1983, Sankara set his sights on combating social injustice, poverty, and corruption in his country, fighting for women's rights, direct forms of democracy, economic sovereignty, and environmental justice.
Drawing on government archival sources and over a hundred interviews with Sankara's family members, friends, and closest revolutionary colleagues, Brian J. Peterson details Sankara's political career and rise to power, as well as his assassination at age 37 in 1987, in a plot led by his close friend Blaise Compaoré.
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers a unique, critical appraisal of Sankara and explores why he generated such enthusiasm and hope in Burkina Faso and beyond, why he was such a polarizing figure, how his rivals seized power from him, and why T-shirts sporting his image still appear on the streets today.
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa by Brian J. Peterson
Journals
Africa Today publishes peer-reviewed, scholarly articles and book reviews in a broad range of academic disciplines on topics related to contemporary Africa. We seek to be a venue for interdisciplinary approaches, diverse perspectives, and original research in the humanities and social sciences. This includes work on social, cultural, political, historical, and economic subjects. Recent special issues have been on topics such as the future of African artistic practices, the socio-cultural life of bus stations in Africa, and family-based health care in Ghana. Africa Today has been on the forefront of African Studies research since 1954. Please review our submission guidelines and then contact the Managing Editor or any of the editors with any questions you might have about publishing in Africa Today.
ACPR: African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review is an interdisciplinary forum for creative and rigorous studies of conflict and peace in Africa, and for discussions among scholars, practitioners, and public intellectuals in Africa, the United States, and other parts of the world. ACPR provides a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on the causes of conflicts and peace processes. These include cultural practices relating to conflict resolution and peacebuilding, legal and political preventative measures, and the intersection of international, regional, and local interests and conceptions with conflict and peace. ACPR: African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review is published in partnership with the West African Research Association.
All manuscripts are subjected to a double-blind peer-review process prior to acceptance and publication.
Black Camera, a journal of Black film studies, is devoted to the study and documentation of the Black cinematic experience and aims to engender and sustain a formal academic discussion of Black film production. We include reviews of historical as well as contemporary books and films, researched critiques of recent scholarship on Black film, interviews with accomplished film professionals, and editorials on the development of Black creative culture. Black Camera challenges received and established views and assumptions about the traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, where new and longstanding cinematic formations are in play. Issues and special sections are devoted to national cinemas, as well as independent, marginal, or oppositional films and cinematic formations.
Mande Studies: The Journal of the Mande Studies Association is an interdisciplinary journal publishing original research that focuses on the Mande-speaking peoples of West Africa and the Mande community in diaspora, from slavery to the post-colony. We welcome articles in the social sciences and the humanities including, but not limited to: history, art history, archeology, sociology, and public health. Articles may range from the precolonial period to the present.
Research in African Literatures, founded in 1970, is the premier journal of African literary studies worldwide and provides a forum in English for research on the oral and written literatures of Africa. In addition to thought-provoking essays, reviews of current scholarly books appear in every issue, often presented as critical essays, and a forum offers readers the opportunity to respond to issues raised in articles and book reviews. Thematic clusters of articles and frequent special issues reveal the broad interests of its readership.

Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men is a multidisciplinary research journal whose articles focus on issues related to aspects of Black men’s experiences, including such topics as gender, masculinities, and race/ethnicity. Spectrum examines the social, political, economic, and historical factors that influence the life chances and experiences of African-descended males using disciplinary and interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, empirical methods, theoretical analysis, and literary criticism.

Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling ideas from and about the black world. Since its founding in Uganda in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the African Diaspora and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate.
Transition is a publication of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente.
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