Critical Dimensions of African Studies

Re-Membering Africa

Jennifer L. De Maio, Suzanne Scheld, Tom Spencer-Walters

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2023
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666917246
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book brings together top researchers, thinkers, and activists from across disciplines to reflect on the study of Africa. Critical Dimensions of African Studies: Re-Membering Africa emphasizes a critique of power structures, the promotion of human liberation, a commitment to social justice and transformation, and critical reflection on the politics of the production and circulation of knowledge of Africa. The editors, Jennifer De Maio, Suzanne Scheld, and Tom Spencer-Walters, organize the book around three related key themes: international/transnational, humanistic, and combined critical theory and practice perspectives. They argue that each theme represents an important dimension of contemporary African and African diaspora studies and re-centering these themes within the discipline will help to advance the field. The diverse contributors capture the goal and method for re-membering Africa by reflecting and defining the field from various disciplines in order to consider the history, the critical debates, and the challenges to current views of the status and future direction of African studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Language and the International/Transnational Lens
• 1: Tom Spencer-Walters: Intellectual Freedom Fighter
• 2: Terms Matter: The Use of “Tribe” in African Studies
• 3: Speaking Africa: Re-membering Africa through Language, Culture, and Aesthetics
• 4: “Africa for the Africans” Garvey and African Transnationality: The Idea of Flexible Citizenship
• 5: “Back Home This Never Would Have Happened”: Imagining Tradition and Modernity among Ugandan Pentecostals in Los Angeles
• Part II: Humanistic Approach
• 6: Bumuntu Humanism and “Values Discourse”: Reflection on the Importance of African Studies in Our Tumultuous Time
• 7: “Working the Past”: Memory, Language, and Echoes of Slavery in Ama Ata Aidoo’s and
• 8: The Power of Memory and Language: Counter-Stories as Oppositional Re-Membering
• 9: Marché Sandaga: The Language of the Built Environment in Remembering and Re-Membering Africa
• Part III: Critical Theory and Practice
• 10: Africa’s Adult Literacy Landscape in the Age of Globalization: A Path to Increased Access and Change
• 11: Remembering Africa: Memory, Disability, and the Narrative Imagination
• 12: Reconciling Traditional and Nontraditional Approaches to Mental Health Services: The African Diaspora Experience
• Part IV: Conclusion
• Afterword
• About the Contributors