Download or read book Sources and Methods in African History written by Toyin Falola and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of the ongoing methods used to understand African history. Spurred in part by the ongoing re-evaluation of sources and methods in research, African historiography in the past two decades has been characterized by the continued branching and increasing sophistication of methodologies and areas of specialization. The rate of incorporation of new sources and methods into African historical research shows no signs of slowing. This book is both a snapshot of current academic practice and an attempt to sort throughsome of the problems scholars face within this unfolding web of sources and methods. The book is divided into five sections, each of which begins with a short introduction by a distinguished Africanist scholar. The first sectiondeals with archaeological contributions to historical research. The second section examines the methodologies involved in deciphering historically accurate African ethnic identities from the records of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The third section mines old documentary sources for new historical perspectives. The fourth section deals with the method most often associated with African historians, that of drawing historical data from oral tradition. Thefifth section is devoted to essays that present innovative sources and methods for African historical research. Together, the essays in this cutting-edge volume represent the current state of the art in African historical research. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Christian Jennings is a Doctoral Candidatein History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Download or read book Problems associated with African history Orality as a source written by James Pinnock and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2010 in the subject History - Africa, grade: 80.0%, , language: English, abstract: “History,” according to E.H. Carr, “cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with those about whom he is writing”. Throughout the pursuit of history, we search for a link between the past and the present, and that, almost definitively, arrives in the form of written sources. However, how should we approach history when written sources elude us, and all we have to rely on (for the most part) are oral sources and tradition? A nature that certainly defines the so-called ‘acephalous’ societies of pre-colonial Africa, and to a lesser extent contemporary Africa. Orality is not seen in modern scholarship, admittedly dominated by Western and Europeanized thought, as a viable or reliable source for constructing history. Yet, does this orality consign Africa to the peripheries of history, to the wastelands of historical thought and theory? Is Africa, as Hugh Trevor-Roper once claimed “unhistoric”? This essay will examine whether oral sources are a sufficient foundation for the history of a continent, and whether their innate weaknesses and flaws as a source indeed render them, as previously believed, inadequate for such a venture. Of paramount importance in this essay is to assess whether a history of Africa can survive within the ideas of what History is and should be, ideas ultimately Western, indeed European, in their conception. Or can we separate Africa from Europe, both in terms of colonial impact and historical theory, and create a purely Africanist history? Hence, by the end of this essay, I hope to have displayed that oral sources have value within themselves as a source for history, and that the constraints of European history need not necessarily apply to Africa. Perhaps then, Africa can be resurrected from the “graveyard of academic publishing”.
Download or read book African History A Very Short Introduction written by John Parker and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007-03-22 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.
Download or read book Writing African History written by John Edward Philips and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive evaluation of how to read African history. Writing African History is an essential work for anyone who wants to write, or even seriously read, African history. It will replace Daniel McCall's classic Africa in Time Perspective as the introduction to African history for the next generation and as a reference for professional historians, interested readers, and anyone who wants to understand how African history is written. Africa in Time Perspective was written in the 1960s, when African history was a new field of research. This new book reflects the development of African history since then. It opens with a comprehensive introduction by Daniel McCall, followed by a chapter by the editor explainingwhat African history is [and is not] in the context of historical theory and the development of historical narrative, the humanities, and social sciences. The first half of the book focuses on sources of historical data while thesecond half examines different perspectives on history. The editor's final chapter explains how to combine various sorts of evidence into a coherent account of African history. Writing African History will become the most important guide to African history for the 21st century. Contributors: Bala Achi, Isaac Olawale Albert, Diedre L. Badéjo, Dorothea Bedigian, Barbara M. Cooper, Henry John Drewal, Christopher Ehret, Toyin Falola, David Henige, Joseph E. Holloway, John Hunwick, S. O. Y. Keita, William G. Martin, Daniel McCall, Susan Keech McIntosh, Donatien Dibwe Dia Mwembu, Kathleen Sheldon, John Thornton, and Masao Yoshida. John Edwards Philips is professor of international society, Hirosaki University, and author of Spurious Arabic: Hausa and Colonial Nigeria [Madison, University of Wisconsin African Studies Center, 2000].
Download or read book Oral Tradition as History written by Jan M. Vansina and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1985-09-06 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jan Vansina’s 1961 book, Oral Tradition, was hailed internationally as a pioneering work in the field of ethno-history. Originally published in French, it was translated into English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and Hungarian. Reviewers were unanimous in their praise of Vansina’s success in subjecting oral traditions to intense functional analysis. Now, Vansina—with the benefit of two decades of additional thought and research—has revised his original work substantially, completely rewriting some sections and adding much new material. The result is an essentially new work, indispensable to all students and scholars of history, anthropology, folklore, and ethno-history who are concerned with the transmission and potential uses of oral material. “Those embarking on the challenging adventure of historical fieldwork with an oral community will find the book a valuable companion, filled with good practical advice. Those who already have collected bodies of oral material, or who strive to interpret and analyze that collected by others, will be forced to subject their own methodological approaches to a critical reexamination in the light of Vansina’s thoughtful and provocative insights. . . . For the second time in a quarter of a century, we are profoundly in the debt of Jan Vansina.”—Research in African Literatures “Oral Traditions as History is an essential addition to the basic literature of African history.”—American Historical Review
Download or read book Oral Tradition written by Jan Vansina and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of African Oral Traditions and Folklore written by Akintunde Akinyemi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-05 with total page 1041 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook offers the most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Preeminent scholars Akintunde Akinyemi and Toyin Falola assemble a team of leading and rising stars across African Studies research to retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the Diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. With five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, methods to pedagogy – this handbook is an indispensable resource to scholars, students, and practitioners of oral traditions and folklore preservation alike. This definitive reference is the first to provide detailed, systematic discussion, and up-to-date analysis of African oral traditions and folklore.
Download or read book Landscapes Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-13 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past offers a comprehensive assessment of new directions in the historiography of West Africa. With twenty-four chapters by leading researchers in the study of West African history and cultures, the volume examines the main trends in multiple fields including the critical interpretation of Arabic sources; new archaeological surveys of trans-Saharan trade; the discovery of sources in Latin America relating to pan-Atlantic histories; and the continuing analysis of oral histories. The volume is dedicated to Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, whose work inspired the intellectual reorientations discussed in its chapters and stands as the clearest formulation of the book’s central focus on the relationship between political conjunctures and the production of sources. Contributors are: Benjamin Acloque, Karin Barber, Seydou Camara, Mamadou Diawara, Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, François-Xavier Fauvelle, Nikolas Gestrich, Toby Green, Bruce Hall, Jan Jansen, Shamil Jeppie, Daouda Keita, Murray Last, Robin Law, Camille Lefebvre, Paul Lovejoy, Ghislaine Lydon, Carlos Magnavita, Sonja Magnavita, Kevin MacDonald, Thomas McCaskie, Ann McDougall, Daniela Moreau, Mauro Nobili, Insa Nolte, Abel-Wedoud Ould-Cheikh, Benedetta Rossi, Charles Stewart.
Download or read book Oral Literature in the Digital Age written by Mark Turin and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. When new publics consume, manipulate and connect with field recordings and digital cultural archives, their involvement raises important practical and ethical questions. This volume explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilised as a consequence of being archived. Fieldwork reports by linguists and anthropologists in three continents provide concrete examples of overcoming barriers -- ethical, practical and conceptual -- in digital documentation projects. Oral Literature In The Digital Age is an essential guide and handbook for ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and all who connect with indigenous communities in order to document and preserve oral traditions.
Download or read book Oral Literature in Africa written by Ruth Finnegan and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.
Download or read book In This Land of Plenty written by Benjamin Talton and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-08-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 7, 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland departed on a flight from Addis Ababa, with his thirteen-member delegation of Ethiopian and American relief workers and policy analysts, bound for Ethiopia's border with Sudan. This was Leland's seventh official humanitarian mission in his nearly decade-long drive to transform U.S. policies toward Africa to conform to his black internationalist vision of global cooperation, antiracism, and freedom from hunger. Leland's flight never arrived at its destination. The plane crashed, with no survivors. When Leland embarked on that delegation, he was a forty-four-year-old, deeply charismatic, fiercely compassionate, black, radical American. He was also an elected Democratic representative of Houston's largely African American and Latino Eighteenth Congressional District. Above all, he was a self-proclaimed "citizen of humanity." Throughout the 1980s, Leland and a small group of former radical-activist African American colleagues inside and outside Congress exerted outsized influence to elevate Africa's significance in American foreign affairs and to move the United States from its Cold War orientation toward a foreign policy devoted to humanitarianism, antiracism, and moral leadership. Their internationalism defined a new era of black political engagement with Africa. In This Land of Plenty presents Leland as the embodiment of larger currents in African American politics at the end of the twentieth century. But a sober look at his aspirations shows the successes and shortcomings of domestic radicalism and aspirations of politically neutral humanitarianism during the 1980s, and the extent to which the decade was a major turning point in U.S. relations with the African continent. Exploring the links between political activism, electoral politics, and international affairs, Benjamin Talton not only details Leland's political career but also examines African Americans' successes and failures in influencing U.S. foreign policy toward African and other Global South countries.
Download or read book Africa s Development in Historical Perspective written by Emmanuel Akyeampong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has Africa remained persistently poor over its recorded history? Has Africa always been poor? What has been the nature of Africa's poverty and how do we explain its origins? This volume takes a necessary interdisciplinary approach to these questions by bringing together perspectives from archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Several contributors note that Africa's development was at par with many areas of Europe in the first millennium of the Common Era. Why Africa fell behind is a key theme in this volume, with insights that should inform Africa's developmental strategies.
Download or read book UNESCO General History of Africa Vol I Abridged Edition written by Jacqueline Ki-Zerbo and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume covers the period from the end of the Neolithic era to the beginning of the seventh century of our era. This lengthy period includes the civilization of Ancient Egypt, the history of Nubia, Ethiopia, North Africa and the Sahara, as well as of the other regions of the continent and its islands."--Publisher's description
Download or read book Africans written by John Iliffe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated and comprehensive single-volume history covering all periods from human origins to contemporary African situations.
Download or read book African Words African Voices written by Luise White and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Words, African Voices considers African history as an art incorporating the experience and testimony of ordinary Africans. It is a provoative volume that evokes the richness and relevance of oral sources for understanding a complex past.
Download or read book The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography written by Thomas Spear and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-04-12 with total page 1736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The difficulties of exploring African history, especially for earlier periods, have spurred the development of a wide range of methodologies and approaches, such that Wyatt McGaffey once termed it "the decathlon of the social sciences." Historians have long utilized archaeology, ethnography, historical linguistics, and oral traditions in their study of the continent, but are only beginning to explore the possibilities of genetics or many of the techniques used by modern archaeology and other emerging sciences. And as digital sources-from historical documents and statistics to cartographic, climatic, demographic, and environmental modeling-proliferate, so do the problems in using them. The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography: Methods and Sources examines how these developments have influenced the scholarship that historians produce. Such methods continue to evolve, demanding that historians develop basic understandings of them. Thus, the two-volume Encyclopedia builds a theoretical foundation for the field, expanding the ways that Africa can be studied, and recovering the histories of the continent that often appear outside of the documentary record.
Download or read book Oral Historiography written by David P. Henige and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1982 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a major re-evaluation of the collection and interpretation of oral historical data. A comparative framework is adopted, though the principal emphasis is on Africa and is based upon the author's extensive knowledge of the continent. Concluding chapters point to the distinction between oral tradition and oral history, and stress the necessity to conserve and make available information collected by oral methods in the field.