Experts present proven methods and techniques for studying about or in Africa! Research, Reference Services, and Resources for the Study of Africa helps you steer clear of washouts, cave-ins, and dead ends on the road to successful research on—or in—Africa. This one-of-a-kind research guide presents practical solutions to frequently occurring problems in the study of Africa, including Internet accessibility problems, errors that will affect a “known item” search, the imposition of colonial legacy, and dealing with gender and class bias. Unlike most references on Africa that concentrate on collection development, this unique book focuses on the study of Africa, making it a must-have for academic librarians, Africanist scholars, and Africana librarians. Specialists, generalist librarians, and end users all depend on tools designed to provide access to information in libraries and on the web including OPACs databases, and search engines. In this book, these tools, research methods, and the accessibility of information on Africa are examined, offering students and professionals a thorough guide to the most successful researching route. Research, Reference Services, and Resources for the Study of Africa provides assistance in the research process according to a variety of categories including: evaluating OPACs and similar databases for known-item searching using keywords, subject headings, bias, indexing, full-text searching, terminology, cataloguing, user-centered information services, and other search strategies to find what you are looking for using Internet resources to your advantage using the partnerships between the U.S. and African libraries and scholarly institutions to help improve information access using techniques for reference librarians to act as a force increasing women’s roles in the study of Africa and much more! Research, Reference Services, and Resources for the Study of Africa offers all the information necessary to avoid research hang-ups that affect the study of Africa, and the necessary information to pass these skills on to students.

Here is an introduction to the history of English writing from East and West Africa drawing on a range of texts from the slave diaspora to the post-war upsurge in African English language and literature from these regions.

This volume provides an overview of fundamental or ‘grounding’ themes in African Cultural Studies, including the articulation of African cultural studies, the issue of Africa’s diaspora(s), African identity and identifications, and media studies in Africa and its relationship with cultural studies. The first of two volumes, the book predominantly pulls together a rich reservoir of previously published articles from Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, mapping a long history of the field that draws from a diverse range of origins and locations, especially from within Africa itself. The first section of the book addresses how African cultural studies has been called for and explained, both as a comprehensive continental (and sometimes national) discourse and as being in conversation with established global cultural studies. The second section addresses the African diaspora and what might be termed diasporic African cultural studies. A third principal theme explored is how African identities and identifications are articulated in African cultural studies. On spatiality, the volume takes a stance on the exclusive continental versus continuity conception of Africa: the African diaspora is treated as contributory and its relationship to the continent as problematic, while taking up continental Africa as the principal location of African cultural studies. In terms of identity, Blackness is taken up as the dominant (but importantly, not exclusive) racial identity, and identification of African cultural studies and gender and social class are also addressed in novel ways. The book ends with an examination of the complex relationship between media studies and cultural studies. This book will be a key resource for academics, researchers and advanced students of African cultural studies, media and cultural studies, African studies, history, politics, sociology, and social and cultural anthropology, while also being of interest to those seeking an introduction to the sub-field of African cultural studies.

From the Pharaohs to Fanon, Dictionary of African Biography provides a comprehensive overview of the lives of the men and women who shaped Africa's history. Unprecedented in scale, DAB covers the whole continent from Tunisia to South Africa, from Sierra Leone to Somalia. It also encompasses the full scope of history from Queen Hatsheput of Egypt (1490-1468 BC) and Hannibal, the military commander and strategist of Carthage (243-183 BC), to Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana (1909-1972), Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (1918 -).

Combining insights from imperial studies and transnational book history, this provocative collection opens new vistas on both fields through ten accessible essays, each devoted to a single book. Contributors revisit well-known works associated with the British empire, including Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Thomas Macaulay's History of England, Charles Pearson's National Life and Character, and Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. They explore anticolonial texts in which authors such as C. L. R. James and Mohandas K. Gandhi chipped away at the foundations of imperial authority, and they introduce books that may be less familiar to students of empire. Taken together, the essays reveal the dynamics of what the editors call an "imperial commons," a lively, empire-wide print culture. They show that neither empire nor book were stable, self-evident constructs. Each helped to legitimize the other. Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Elleke Boehmer, Catherine Hall, Isabel Hofmeyr, Aaron Kamugisha, Marilyn Lake, Charlotte Macdonald, Derek Peterson, Mrinalini Sinha, Tridip Suhrud, André du Toit