The Readings in ... series of edited volumes bring together the key texts, articles and book chapters relating to some main topical areas in African studies. The volumes are cross-disciplinary, covering newer fields of enquiry such as popular culture, modernity, health, religion and gender studies. They are aimed at a tertiary level audience, for teaching. Work published in Africa is included. Readers also include newly commissioned hitherto unpublished work where there are significant gaps in the field or new developments in the literature.
Readings in African Modernity
Edited by Peter Geschiere, Birgit Meyer, Peter Pels
Scholars have felt the urgency to understand modernity in present-day Africa, and have tried to make sense of these desires to ‘develop’. Yet, people often regard ‘modernity’ as an abomination as much as a blessing, and yearn nostalgically for a vanished past. These varied forms of modernity are the focus of this volume.
‘The stimulating introduction and essays in this volume underscore why modernity remains a factious yet highly significant concept for Africans – and thus for scholars of Africa.’ - Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong
ISBN 9780852558980, 240pp. Oct 2008
Readings in ... series
Readings in Gender in Africa
Edited by Andrea Cornwall
This book brings together existing work in a number of key areas so placing the substantial growth of interdisciplinary teaching and research in African gender studies during the last decades. African gender relations emerge as a key arena of social transformation, which has inspired theoretical insights of global import.
‘[Cornwall] is to be commended for including the work of leading African scholars alongside that of their European and North American counterparts, thus providing an excellent and long overdue teaching text that works to remedy the over-determination of African scholarship by Western institutional and intellectual interests.’
Amina Mama, African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town
Andrea Cornwall is a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
ISBN 9780852558713, Xvii + 248 pp., 2005
Readings in ... series
Readings in African Politics
Edited by Tom Young
This overview volume represents core knowledge in the field of African politics. Topic areas covered are: methods for appraising the modern African state, approaches to understanding African states and their politics, dimensions of regional conflict, conflict between traditional and modern values, the politics of new social forces, and the meaning of contemporary trends.
Tom Young is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
ISBN 9780852552575, x + 242 pp., 2003
Readings in ... series
Readings in African Popular Fiction
Edited by Stephanie Newell
This rich and intelligently conceived anthology challenges the paradigms taken for granted in postcolonial studies, and demonstrates that ‘subaltern voices’ so often assumed to be silent or suppressed can be heard loud and clear if one cares to locate oneself outside Western academies and networks.
‘…forces a reconsideration of the idea of “African literature”. -Eileen Julien, Indiana University.
Stephanie Newell is Lecturer in English and Convenor of MA in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Sussex.
ISBN 9780852555644, 224pp., 2002
Readings in ... series
Readings in African Popular Culture
Edited by Karin Barber
This book is about `cultural productivity'. In the last fifteen years, African `popular culture' has moved centre stage, attracting excellent scholarship. In her seminal introduction Barber writes: ‘The emphasis is biased towards the verbal rather than the visual; this could be taken as an antidote to the predominant view of Africa as producer of masks, figurines and airport art. The emphasis is on works – recognisable genres, known and discussed as such in the communities that produce them.'
‘…a critical testament of African popular culture. I strongly recommend it to readers and libraries.’ Tanure Ojaide in African Studies Review.
Karin Barber is a professor at the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham.
ISBN 9780852552360 184pp. 1997
