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African Americans of Monterey County (Images of America)
by Jan Batiste AdkinsPeople of African heritage have traveled to Monterey since the 1770s, when African Spaniard Alexo Nino, a ship's caulker, traveled with Fr. Junipero Serra to Monterey via the San Antonio. For centuries since Nino, black men and women migrated to the Monterey Bay area in search of a new life. In the 20th century, some African Americans established businesses, bought homes, and encouraged family members and friends to settle in Monterey County. Others pursued military careers. Out of these communities came churches, schools, service organizations, and social groups. For the next century, the history of Monterey County's African American communities have mirrored the nation's slow progress toward integration with triumphs and setbacks that have been captured in images of employment opportunities, churches, business successes, and political struggles.
African Americans of New Orleans (Images of America)
by Phoenix Savage Turry FluckerEnslaved Africans and free people of color of Louisiana deserve the title of "Founding Fathers" just as much as the French, the Spanish, and the Americans. In spite of their subjugated role as slaves, African Americans of Louisiana, and subsequently New Orleans, were contributors to the success of the state and the city far beyond their role within the labor force. Imported into the Louisiana Territory by John Law's Company of the Indies, enslaved Africans, fed on a pound of corn a day, gave birth to American figures of the 19th and 20th centuries. Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong, Homer Plessy, Marie Laveau, Buddy Bolden, Julies Lion, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, the fighting men of the Louisiana Native Guard, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, and many other African Americans contributed to the growth and development of New Orleans. Every African American citizen of New Orleans is intrinsically connected to the city's cultural and political landscape.
African Americans of Round Top (Images of America)
by David CollinsRound Top's African American pioneers came into Texas in 1825 when Stephen F. Austin brought in 300 Anglo-Americans, and the people they enslaved, for the purpose of colonizing the area. Soon afterward, more slaves were bought in from other slaveholding states. After the Civil War ended, the descendants of these original Round Top pioneers began building their own community. Many earned money by toiling away in the cotton fields for the very men who had once enslaved them. Others earned money working as cowboys, washerwomen, barbers, or blacksmiths. In 1867, the group founded the Concord Missionary Baptist Church as a communal space for them to come together and pool their resources to buy their own land, build their own homes, and hire teachers, which led to the creation of the Concord Missionary Baptist Church Colored School. For generations, this school successfully educated freedmen, their children, and their descendants before finally closing its doors due to desegregation. Despite many challenges, they overcame obstacles that grew into a prosperous community.
African Americans of Tampa (Images of America)
by Ersula Knox OdomTampa has a fascinating past that has been wonderfully documented with one exception: African Americans. This culturally rich community is virtually invisible in the eyes of history. Tampa's population exploded during the early 1900s, and the building boom universally required the skills and talents of African Americans, who provided services, labor, and entrepreneurship in a massive form. They played significant roles in everything from Tampa's wilderness era to its boomtown years and were key players in the first and second Seminole Wars with their Seminole alliance. African American soldiers captured Fort Brooke during the Civil War and fought in the Spanish-American War. Residents have endured Jim Crow, desegregation, and racial unrest yet thrived as entrepreneurs. Black Cubans, as part of the greater African American community, enabled Tampa's world-renowned cigar industry. The photographs found in this volume clearly illustrate Tampa's social and productive African American community.
African Americans of Wichita (Images of America)
by The Kansas African American MuseumThe African American community of Wichita is as old as the city itself, dating back to early pioneers, cowboys, and business figures. Once relatively integrated, Wichita became more segregated as the 20th century unfolded. In response, African Americans developed a lively neighborhood downtown with its own businesses, churches, schools, and organizations. World War II brought new populations to work in the aircraft industry and set the stage for profound changes. In the 1950s, a younger generation of leaders challenged racism and discrimination, unleashing a period of change that was both hopeful and painful. In recent years, the African American community has become more complex, with generations of established families joined by recent transplants, emigrants from Africa, and children of mixed marriages. While challenges remain, African Americans are more visible than ever before in local life, evident in politics, business, sports, and education.
African Appropriations: Cultural Difference, Mimesis, And Media
by Matthias KringsWhy would a Hollywood film become a Nigerian video remake, a Tanzanian comic book, or a Congolese music video? Matthias Krings explores the myriad ways Africans respond to the relentless onslaught of global culture. He seeks out places where they have adapted pervasive cultural forms to their own purposes as photo novels, comic books, songs, posters, and even scam letters. These African appropriations reveal the broad scope of cultural mediation that is characteristic of our hyperlinked age. Krings argues that there is no longer an "original" or "faithful copy," but only endless transformations that thrive in the fertile ground of African popular culture.
African Art Now
by Osei BonsuOver the past two decades contemporary African art has taken its rightful place on the world stage. Today, African artists work outside the confines of limiting categories and outdated perceptions; they produce art that is as much a reflection of Africa's tumultuous past as it is a vision of its boundless future. African Art Now is an expansive overview featuring some of the most interesting and innovative artists working today. Far-reaching in its scope, this book celebrates the diversity and dynamism of the contemporary African art scene across the continent today.Featuring the work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Michael Armitage, Amoako Boafo, Cassi Namoda, Cinga Samson, Zina Saro-Wiwa and many more.
African Art Now
by Osei BonsuOver the past two decades contemporary African art has taken its rightful place on the world stage. Today, African artists work outside the confines of limiting categories and outdated perceptions; they produce art that is as much a reflection of Africa's tumultuous past as it is a vision of its boundless future. African Art Now is an expansive overview featuring some of the most interesting and innovative artists working today. Far-reaching in its scope, this book celebrates the diversity and dynamism of the contemporary African art scene across the continent today.Featuring the work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Michael Armitage, Amoako Boafo, Cassi Namoda, Cinga Samson, Zina Saro-Wiwa and many more.
African Art Now: 50 Pioneers Defining African Art for the Twenty-First Century
by Osei BonsuThis deluxe hardcover survey, featuring profiles of 50 artists on the rise, is the definitive guide to contemporary African art.With African artists attracting sizable audience numbers to museums, setting sky-high auction records, and appearing in mainstream press, it has become impossible to overlook the cultural significance of contemporary African art today. Author and curator Osei Bonsu's engaging profiles of leading African artists—along with gorgeous full-color reproductions of their work—introduce readers to a generation of movers and shakers whose innovative artwork reflects on Africa as both an idea and an experience. Using diverse forms, languages, and expressions to articulate what it means to be a part of the world, these artists generate alternate histories and imaginative futures—work that is both personal and political, universal and incredibly specific. Their work helps define contemporary African art as a vast artistic and cultural movement.STELLAR ROSTER OF ARTISTS: Amoako Boafo, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Bronwyn Katz—from household names to up-and-coming artists, African Art Now features some of the most exciting artists working today. IMPORTANT AND TIMELY: Over the past two decades, contemporary African art has become part of the global mainstream, inspiring countless exhibitions, fairs, and auctions around the world. And yet, African art remains overlooked as an area of dedicated study due to continued academic and cultural bias. This book shines a spotlight on the artists whose wide-ranging accomplishments represent the shifting dynamics and boundless possibilities of African art today. Perfect for:Artists, art collectors, art lovers, and museumgoersEducators and studentsAnyone interested in learning about contemporary African art
African Art Reframed: Reflections and Dialogues on Museum Culture
by Bennetta Jules-Rosette J.R. OsbornOnce seen as a collection of artifacts and ritual objects, African art now commands respect from museums and collectors. Bennetta Jules-Rosette and J.R. Osborn explore the reframing of African art through case studies of museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Africa. The authors take a three-pronged approach. Part One ranges from curiosity cabinets to virtual websites to offer a history of ethnographic and art museums and look at their organization and methods of reaching out to the public. In the second part, the authors examine museums as ecosystems and communities within communities, and they use semiotic methods to analyze images, signs, and symbols drawn from the experiences of curators and artists. The third part introduces innovative strategies for displaying, disseminating, and reclaiming African art. The authors also propose how to reinterpret the art inside and outside the museum and show ways of remixing the results. Drawing on extensive conversations with curators, collectors, and artists, African Art Reframed is an essential guide to building new exchanges and connections in the dynamic worlds of African and global art.
African Art and Agency in the Workshop
by Till Förster Sidney Littlefield KasfirThe role of the workshop in the creation of African art is the subject of this revelatory book. In the group setting of the workshop, innovation and imitation collide, artists share ideas and techniques, and creative expression flourishes. African Art and Agency from the Workshop examines the variety of workshops, from those which are politically driven or tourist oriented, to those based on historical patronage or allied to current artistic trends. Fifteen lively essays explore the impact of the workshop on the production of artists such as Zimbabwean stone sculptors, master potters from Cameroon, wood carvers from Nigeria, and others from across the continent.
African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing A Global Commodity (African Expressive Cultures)
by Sidney Littlefield KasfirFocusing on the theme of warriorhood, Sidney Littlefield Kasfir weaves a complex history of how colonial influence forever changed artistic practice, objects, and their meaning. Looking at two widely diverse cultures, the Idoma in Nigeria and the Samburu in Kenya, Kasfir makes a bold statement about the links between colonialism, the Europeans' image of Africans, Africans' changing self representation, and the impact of global trade on cultural artifacts and the making of art. This intriguing history of the interaction between peoples, aesthetics, morals, artistic objects and practices, and the global trade in African art challenges current ideas about artistic production and representation.
African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude
by Souleymane Bachir DiagneThis critically acclaimed study offers a distinct, incisive look at how Senegalese philosopher Senghor sees in African art the most acute expression of Bergson&’s philosophy.Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) was a Senegalese poet and philosopher who in 1960 also became the first president of the Republic of Senegal. In African Art as Philosophy, Souleymane Bachir Diagne uses a unique approach to reading Senghor&’s influential works, taking as the starting point for his analysis Henri Bergson&’s idea that in order to understand philosophers, one must find the initial intuition from which every aspect of their work develops. In the case of Senghor, Diagne argues that his primordial intuition is that African art is a philosophy.To further this point, Diagne looks at what Senghor called the &“1889 Revolution&” (the year Bergson&’s Time and Free Will was published), as well as the influential writers and publications of that period—specifically, Nietzsche and Rimbaud. The 1889 Revolution, Senghor claims, is what led him to the understanding of the &“Vitalism&” at the core of African religions and beliefs that found expression in the arts.
African Art in Motion
by Robert Farris ThompsonThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.
African Art, Interviews, Narratives: Bodies of Knowledge at Work (African Expressive Cultures)
by Joanna Grabski and Carol MageeJoanna Grabski and Carol Magee bring together a compelling collection that shows how interviews can be used to generate new meaning and how connecting with artists and their work can transform artistic production into innovative critical insights and knowledge. The contributors to this volume include artists, museum curators, art historians, and anthropologists, who address artistic production in a variety of locations and media to question previous uses of interview and provoke alternative understandings of art.
African Battle Traditions of Insult: Verbal Arts, Song-Poetry, and Performance (African Histories and Modernities)
by Tanure OjaideThis book explores the “battles” of words, songs, poetry, and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora. These are usually highly competitive, artistic contests in which rival parties duel for supremacy in poetry composition and/or its performance. This volume covers the history of this battle tradition, from its origins in Africa, especially the udje and halo of the Urhobo and Ewe respectively, to its transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean region during the Atlantic slave trade period, and its modern and contemporary manifestations as battle rap or other forms of popular music in Africa. Almost everywhere there are contemporary manifestations of the more traditional, older genres. The book is thus made up of studies of contests in which rivals duel for supremacy in verbal arts, song-poetry, and performance as they display their wit, sense of humor, and poetic expertise.
African Cinema and Human Rights (Studies In The Cinema Of The Black Diaspora Ser.)
by Edited by Mette Hjort and Eva JørholtEssays and case studies exploring how filmmaking can play a role in promoting social and economic justice. Bringing theory and practice together, African Cinema and Human Rights argues that moving images have a significant role to play in advancing the causes of justice and fairness. The contributors to this volume identify three key ways in which film can achieve these goals: Documenting human rights abuses and thereby supporting the claims of victims and goals of truth and reconciliation within larger communitiesLegitimating, and consequently solidifying, an expanded scope for human rightsPromoting the realization of social and economic right Including the voices of African scholars, scholar-filmmakers, African directors Jean-Marie Teno and Gaston Kaboré, and researchers whose work focuses on transnational cinema, this volume explores overall perspectives, and differences of perspective, pertaining to Africa, human rights, and human rights filmmaking alongside specific case studies of individual films and areas of human rights violations. With its interdisciplinary scope, attention to practitioners&’ self-understandings, broad perspectives, and particular case studies, African Cinema and Human Rights is a foundational text that offers questions, reflections, and evidence that help us to consider film&’s ideal role within the context of our ever-continuing struggle towards a more just global society.
African Cinema: Volume 1: Colonial Antecedents, Constituents, Theory, and Articulations (Studies in the Cinema of the Black Diaspora)
by David Murphy James Burns James E. Genova Michael T. Martin Roy Armes Tom Rice Beti Ellerson Boukary Sawadogo Keyan G. Tomaselli Teshome H. Gabriel Gaston Jean-Marie Kaboré Femi Okiremuete Shaka Odile Goerg Med Hondo Férid Boughedir Haile Gerima Sada Niang Monique Mbeka Phoba Olivier Barlet Clyde R. Taylor Alexie Tcheuyap Esiaba Irobi Stephen A. Zacks Jude Akudinobi Maureen N. Eke Arnold Shepperson Paulin Soumanou Vieyra Claude Forest Samba GadjigoChallenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film. Volume One of this landmark series on African cinema draws together foundational scholarship on its history and evolution. Beginning with the ideological project of colonial film to legitimize the economic exploitation and cultural hegemony of the African continent during imperial rule to its counter-historical formation and theorization. It comprises essays by film scholars and filmmakers alike, among them Roy Armes, Med Hondo, Fèrid Boughedir, Haile Gerima, Oliver Barlet, Teshome Gabriel, and David Murphy, including three distinct dossiers: a timeline of key dates in the history of African cinema; a comprehensive chronicle and account of the contributions by African women in cinema; and a homage and overview of Ousmane Sembène, the "Father" of African cinema.
African Cinema: Volume 2: FESPACO—Formation, Evolution, Challenges (Studies in the Cinema of the Black Diaspora)
by Wole Soyinka Lindiwe Dovey Michael T. Martin Manthia Diawara Beti Ellerson June Givanni Imruh Bakari Sheila Petty Gaston Jean-Marie Kaboré Férid Boughedir Olivier Barlet Ardiouma Soma Sambolgo Bangre Dorothee Wenner M. Africanus Aveh Mahir Saul Mbye Cham Ousmane Sembene Aboubakar Sanogo Teresa Hoefert de Turegano Claire Andrade-Watkins Rod Stoneman Claire Diao Michel Amarger Mustapha Ouedgraogo Colin Dupré Rémi AbegaChallenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film.Volume Two of this landmark series on African cinema is devoted to the decolonizing mediation of the Pan African Film & Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the most important, inclusive, and consequential cinematic convocation of its kind in the world. Since its creation in 1969, FESPACO's mission is, in principle, remarkably unchanged: to unapologetically recover, chronicle, affirm, and reconstitute the representation of the African continent and its global diasporas of people, thereby enunciating in the cinematic, all manner of Pan-African identity, experience, and the futurity of the Black World. This volume features historically significant and commissioned essays, commentaries, conversations, dossiers, and programmatic statements and manifestos that mark and elaborate the key moments in the evolution of FESPACO over the span of the past five decades.
African Cinema: Volume 3: The Documentary Record—Declarations, Resolutions, Manifestos, Speeches (Studies in the Cinema of the Black Diaspora)
by Michael T. Martin Gaston Jean-Marie KaboréChallenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film. Volume Three of this landmark series on African cinema spans the past century and is devoted to the documentation of decoloniality in cultural policy in both Africa and the Black diaspora worldwide. A compendium of formal resolutions, declarations, manifestos, and programmatic statements, it chronologically maps the long history and trajectories of cultural policy in Africa and the Black Atlantic. Beginning with the 1920 declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, which anticipates cinema as we know it today, and the formal oppositional assertions—aspirational and practical. The first part of this work references formal statements that pertain directly to cultural policy and cinematic formations in Africa, while the next part addresses the Black diaspora. Each entry is chronologically ordered to account for when the statement was created, followed by where and in what context it was enunciated.
African Design Futures: Decolonising Minds, Education, Spaces, and Practices (Sustainable Development Goals Series)
by Yaw Ofosu-AsareThis book responds to the question "Is it time to reimagine design education in Africa and decolonise our creative future?" The proposed volume is designed to provide a source of inspiration to readers in imagining their own futures within fields of Creative industries such as performative art, architecture design, industrial design, media production, drawing and illustration, filmmaking, design, documentary, virtual reality, and others. With a focus on decolonising design education in Africa, this book will challenge the dominant capitalist narrative and centre on the needs of African communities. It will provide insights into the challenges and opportunities of decolonising design education and propose alternative models for design education that promote social and environmental sustainability, cultural preservation, and community empowerment. Collectively, the proposed book's accounts bring to life the career possibilities within a rapidly expanding global sector of creativity and innovation with immense cultural, social, political, and economic impact. By exploring new models of creative practice and education that centre on social impact, cultural relevance, and community empowerment, this book will inspire readers to think critically about their own futures in the Creative Industries in Africa.
African Discourse in Islam, Oral Traditions, and Performance (African Studies)
by Abdul-Rasheed Na'AllahThrough an engaged analysis of writers such as Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Niyi Osundare, and Tanure Ojaide and of African traditional oral poets like Omoekee Amao Ilorin and Mamman Shata Katsina, Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah develops an African indigenous discourse paradigm for interpreting and understanding literary and cultural materials. Na'Allah argues for the need for cultural diversity in critical theorizing in the twenty-first century. He highlights the critical issues facing scholars and students involved in criticism and translation of marginalized texts. By returning the African knowledge system back to its roots and placing it side by side with Western paradigms, Na'Allah has produced a text that will be required reading for scholars and students of African culture and literature. It is an important contribution to scholarship in the domain of mobility of African oral tradition, and on African literary, cultural and performance discourse.
African Documentary Cinema: Beyond Representation (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)
by Alexie TcheuyapAfrican Documentary Cinema investigates the inception and trajectory of contemporary documentary filmmaking in sub-Saharan African countries and their diasporas. The book challenges critical paradigms that have long prevailed in African film criticism, shedding light on the diverse discourses and evolving aesthetic trends present within documentary films.Situating his analysis within the context of the significant transformation of the African film industry, the author focuses on the development, diversity, and shifting dynamics that have impacted contemporary documentary cinema. Examining the historical, political, sociological, economic, and cultural factors that have facilitated the rise of documentary films—especially those created by female documentarians—the book assesses the emergence of documentary filmmakers spanning different generations. Their training, practices, and innovative perspectives on social, political, and environmental issues ultimately give rise to new frameworks for understanding the bio-documentary genre, issues of gender discrimination, LGBTQIA+ identities, environmental trauma, genocide, and memory on the African continent.This ground-breaking study offers new insight into a rapidly expanding topic and will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of film studies, documentary film, media industry studies, African studies, French, postcolonial studies, politics, and cultural studies.
African Dream Machines: Style, Identity and Meaning of African Headrests
by Anitra NettletonAfrican Dream Machines takes African headrests out of the category of functional objects and into the more rarefied category of ‘art’ objects. Styles in African headrests are usually defined in terms of western art and archaeological discourses, but this book interrogates these definitions of style and demonstrates the shortcomings of defining a single formal style model as exclusive to a single ethnic group. Among the artefacts made by southern African peoples, headrests were the best known. Anitra Nettleton’s study of the uses and forms of headrests opened up a number of art-historical methodologies in the attempt to gain an understanding of form, style and content in African art objects. Her drawings of each and every headrest encountered become a major part of the project.
African Energy Worlds in Film and Media (New Directions in National Cinemas)
by Carmela GarritanoCan you imagine a post-petroleum world? African Energy Worlds in Film and Media joins energy humanists committed to undoing our deep dependence on fossil fuels and advancing equitable energy transitions by advancing this vision with a spotlight on African perspectives.African cinema is a rich and varied medium for investigating the entanglements and social embeddedness of energy with global modernity and for imagining a world that leaves fossil fuels behind for unrealized green energy futures. African Energy Worlds in Film and Media shows us how African cinema makes sensible the energetic aspects of life in the ecological mesh that is planet Earth and grounds us in the everyday of the postcolonial, bringing attention to the enduring legacies of racism and colonialism that unevenly distribute energy-related violence and risk and amplifying Africans' demands for access to the energy networks that undergird modernity. With a focus on feature, documentary, and arthouse films, including canonical films by Ousmane Sembène and Djbril Diop Mambety and new work by emergent directors Nelson Makengo and Djo Tunda Wa Munga, author Carmela Garritano examines how these stories depict an array of energy sources from mineral extraction to wind and the by-products of these energy processes, like plastic and electronic waste.Situated at the intersection of film studies, African studies, and energy humanities, African Energy Worlds in Film and Media analyzes the political, social, and economic dimensions of global energy forms and systems as represented in African cinema.