In this issue’s In Memoriam section, James Ogude, Susan Kiguli, Ndirangu Wachanga, Brendon Nicholls, and Gilbert Shang Ndi reflect on the life and work of the late Kenyan visionary author and theorist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Read their tributes here: https://t.co/MFbpyiaduU
For Dotun Ayobade, “Project a Black Planet,” presented at the Art Institute of Chicago, did more than represent Pan-Africanism: it “enacted” it. This review essay explores the exhibition’s vision of Black art, solidarity, and future-making. https://t.co/yxfuuJQ9qA
How to mobilize 170 million people into a coherent political voice? In her Hormuud Lecture, 'On the Demanding Forward Flight of the Diasporan Sankofa Bird,' Abena P.A. Busia examines the promises & contradictions of the AU's 6th Diaspora Region. https://t.co/mLvuu1poQF
Sudan’s democratic transition faltered as the US “missed another democratic moment.” Rawia Tawfik shows how a self-defeating foreign policy—shaped by strategic priorities, bureaucratic inertia, & regional alliances—undermined civilian rule. https://t.co/6eDrhSTHND
What political work does rumor do? Diana Felix da Costa traces how claims about Murle infertility in South Sudan hardened into myth, legitimizing exclusion, securitization, and violence. https://t.co/ZiuJrdZsVI
Nomthandazo Malambo and Stephen Brown examine how abortion and LGBTI+ rights in Zambia are both stigmatized as “un-Christian” and “un-Zambian,” while activists use those same pressures to build coalitions for reproductive justice. https://t.co/6kwuT1sZId
What does women’s labor make visible in the African city? Tolulope Akinwole argues that women’s “discursive and performative actions” are central to understanding work, struggle, and urban life in Lagos. https://t.co/PGLp3Xz2WH
30 years after his execution, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s legacy endures. Editor-in-Chief Cajetan Iheka traces the “afterlife” of his activism for Ogoni self-determination & environmental justice in art, literature & social movements. Read the editorial https://t.co/TCZ20e1i3K
The new ASR issue (69.1) is here. From Sudan’s stalled transition to Pan-African art, sexual citizenship in Nigeria, reproductive justice in Zambia, and diaspora politics—this issue traces power, embodiment, and resistance. Read it here: https://t.co/MFbpyiaduU
Chijioke Onah’s ASR article “#BringBackOurGirls,” from our vol. 67, no. 2, has been named a finalist for the ASWAD Article Prize, which honours outstanding scholarship on Africa and/or the African Diaspora. Congratulations, Chijioke! @kizichiji
https://t.co/GiskKRhKxv
In this issue’s In Memoriam section, Aliko Songolo, Anjali Prabhu, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, & Tsitsi Jaji each pay tribute to the late Congolese philosopher & writer V. Y. Mudimbe. Read their thoughtful contributions here: https://t.co/pNKkbnLzjZ
Reviewing recent works that focus on “governance deficit in public authority” in Nigeria and Ghana, Bernard Nwosu examines the relationship of such fragility to the “current condition of the political state in Africa.” https://t.co/eVkP85SmMq
Jennifer Lofkrantz, Bréma Ely Dicko, and Chitra Nagarajan examine how an individual’s perceived positionality affects their response to the evocation of historical memory in the Katiba Macina and Boko Haram-related conflicts. https://t.co/VUu32tPfGi
Using the concept of “deep listening,” Fauziyatu Moro and Reginold A. Royston examine “podcasting, as a technology of sound…for the way its content resonates with listeners in Africa, with and beyond the physical aspects of hearing.” https://t.co/zuZ8dFWlWL
Despite similarly undelivered promises, Pritish Behuria documents how “the ‘democratic’ Mauritian and Botswana governments were more flexible in adapting their luxury tourism strategies than the ‘authoritarian’ Rwandan government. https://t.co/Q9ua5lP35c
Hangala Siachiwena challenges “the narrow framing of [former Zambian president Michael] Sata as a populist” and instead, “situates his politics within broader debates on development in post-adjustment Africa.” https://t.co/EJG19vj2cN
Mahder Serekberhan discusses the central importance of working peoples’ nonhierarchical coordination to the success of the 2018/2019 Sudanese Uprising, an essay for which she won the 2023 ASA Graduate Student Paper Prize. https://t.co/y90rspdKC4