Engaging and interrogating the idea of a 'Global Africa', this book examines how African literary and cultural productions have changed over the years due to the social and political influences brought about by increased globalisation. Tanure Ojaide takes a variety of European theoretical concepts and applies these to African literature, oral traditions, culture, sexuality, political leadership, environmentalism, and advocacy, demonstrating the universality of the African experience. Challenging African literary artists and scholars to think creatively about the future of the culture and literature, this new collection of literary and cultural criticism from scholar-writer Tanure Ojaide is an essential read for students and scholars of African literature and culture.

Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone.

For too long, Africa’s history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight.

In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa’s spectacular history – from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilisations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story.

The result is a gripping new account of Africa: an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves.

This collection presents diverse scholarly approaches to oral narratives in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking worlds. Eleven essays, originally written in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, coalesce around major themes that have long concerned oral historians and social scientists: collective memories of conflictive national pasts, subjectivity in re/framing social identities, and visual and performative re/presentations of identity and public memory.

The Vietnam War has had many long-reaching, traumatic effects, not just on the veterans of the war, but on their children as well. In this book, Weber examines the concept of the war as a social monad, a confusing array of personal stories and public histories that disrupt traditional ways of knowing the social world for the second generation.

Based on archival sources and oral history, this book reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century and ended with the construction of a continuous two-metre-high fence by the South African colonial government sixty years later. This 1250-kilometre fence divides northern from central Namibia even today. The book combines a macro and a micro-perspective and differentiates between cartographic and physical reality. The analysis explores both the colonial state's agency with regard to veterinary and settlement policies and the strategies of Africans and Europeans living close to the border. The analysis also includes the varying perceptions of individuals and populations who lived further north and south of the border and describes their experiences crossing the border as migrant workers, African traders, European settlers and colonial officials. The Red Line's history is understood as a gradual process of segregating livestock and people, and of constructing dichotomies of modern and traditional, healthy and sick, European and African.

Who gets pockets, and why?

It’s a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men’s clothes have so many pockets and women’s so few? And why are the pockets on women’s clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? In her captivating book, Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets.

Throughout the medieval era in Europe, the purse was an almost universal dress feature. But when tailors stitched the first pockets into men’s trousers five hundred years ago, it ignited controversy and introduced a range of social issues that we continue to wrestle with today, from concealed pistols to gender inequality. See: #GiveMePocketsOrGiveMeDeath.

Filled with incredible images, this microhistory of the humble pocket uncovers what pockets tell us about ourselves: How is it that putting your hands in your pockets can be seen as a sign of laziness, arrogance, confidence, or perversion? Walt Whitman’s author photograph, hand in pocket, for Leaves of Grass seemed like an affront to middle-class respectability. When W.E.B. Du Bois posed for a portrait, his pocketed hands signaled defiant coolness.

And what else might be hiding in the history of our pockets? (There’s a reason that the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets are the most popular exhibit at the Library of Congress.) Thinking about the future, Carlson asks whether we will still want pockets when our clothes contain “smart” textiles that incorporate our IDs and credit cards.

Pockets is for the legions of people obsessed with pockets and their absence, and for anyone interested in how our clothes influence the way we navigate the world.

Jay Prosser has written a family memoir that at its core, builds a bridge across the terrible divides of our times.

It’s a Jewish book, but not just a Jewish book. It moves Jewish writing away from its customary setting of the Holocaust and Europe and transports Jewish identity to Iraq, India, China and Singapore: places and cultures that most people (including Jews themselves) don’t associate with Jewish identity. It shows Jews integrating with others, not divisive, not separate: not antagonistic.

The issue of intermarriage is increasingly important for all racial groups and this book speaks beyond the Jewish community, in relation to how we treat strangers in the form of immigrants and other communities.

The Oral History Reader, now in its third edition, is a comprehensive, international anthology combining major, 'classic' articles with cutting-edge pieces on the theory, method and use of oral history. Twenty-seven new chapters introduce the most significant developments in oral history in the last decade to bring this invaluable text up to date, with new pieces on emotions and the senses, on crisis oral history, current thinking around traumatic memory, the impact of digital mobile technologies, and how oral history is being used in public contexts, with more international examples to draw in work from North and South America, Britain and Europe, Australasia, Asia and Africa. Arranged in five thematic sections, each with an introduction by the editors to contextualise the selection and review relevant literature, articles in this collection draw upon diverse oral history experiences to examine issues including: Key debates in the development of oral history over the past seventy years First hand reflections on interview practice, and issues posed by the interview relationship The nature of memory and its significance in oral history The practical and ethical issues surrounding the interpretation, presentation and public use of oral testimonies how oral history projects contribute to the study of the past and involve the wider community. The challenges and contributions of oral history projects committed to advocacy and empowerment With a revised and updated bibliography and useful contacts list, as well as a dedicated online resources page, this third edition of The Oral History Reader is the perfect tool for those encountering oral history for the first time, as well as for seasoned practitioners.

History students read a lot. They read primary sources. They read specialized articles and monographs. They sometimes read popular histories. And they read textbooks. Yet students are beginners, and as beginners they need to learn the differences among various kinds of readings - their natures, their challenges, and the unique expectations one needs to bring to each of them. Reading History is a practical guide to help students read better. Uniquely designed with the author's engaging explanations in the margins, the book describes primary sources across various genres, including documents of practice, treatises, and literary works, as well as secondary sources such as textbooks, articles, and monographs. An appendix contains tips and questions for reading primary or secondary sources. Full of practical advice and hands-on training that allows students to be successful, Reading History will cultivate a wider appreciation for the discipline of history.

Condemned as a fascist putsch in the East and praised as a 'people's uprising' in the West, the uprising of 17 June 1953 shook East Germany. Drawing on interviews and archive research, this book examines East German citizens' memories of the unrest and reflects on the nature of state power in the GDR.

This book introduces lexomics, the use of computer-aided statistical analysis of vocabulary, to measure influence and integrate research from cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology with traditional, philological approaches to literature. Connecting the theory of tradition with the phenomenon of influence, Drout moves beyond current theories.

Sissy home boys or domestic outlaws? Through a series of vivid case studies taken from across the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Matt Cook explores the emergence of these trenchant stereotypes and looks at how they play out in the home and family lives of queer men.

Because oral history interviews are personal interactions between human beings, they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. These reflections from oral historians provide honest and rigorous analyses of actual oral history practice that address the complexities of a human-centered methodology.

Virgil Richardson blazed his own unique trail through the twentieth century: a co-founder of Harlem's American Negro Theater, 1930s radio personality, World War II pilot, and expatriate for most of his life. In Flight, this remarkable man tells his story in his own vivid words. Educated in Texas, Richardson set out for New York City in 1938 to build a career on the stage. Just when he was on the brink of success as an actor, World War II broke out and he was drafted into the army. After overcoming numerous obstacles, Richardson became a Tuskegee cadet in 1943, and later saw action flying over the battlefields of Europe. Upon returning to the racially divided U.S., he decided to move to Mexico, where he encountered a society quite different from the one he had left behind. Compellingly told and historically fascinating, this is the story of a determined individual unwilling to accept the limited options of Jim Crow America.

This title provides a collection of oral histories that reveal the loss of cultural continuity, identity, shifts in family responsibilities, gender roles and fractured relationships between generations. It shows how these are just some of the challenges people face as they attempt to rebuild lives and communities.

Of the 400,000 German-speaking Jews that escaped the Third Reich, about 16,000 ended up in Shanghai, China. This groundbreaking volume gathers 20 years of interviews with over 100 former Shanghai refugees. It offers a moving collective portrait of courage, culture shock, persistence, and enduring hope in the face of unimaginable hardships.

This oral history collection brings together extended interviews with fifteen women, illuminating the part that gender roles play in ensnaring women in cycles of domestic abuse and homelessness and highlighting the physical stresses. It also challenges liberal myths about homeless people, and homeless women in particular.

Immigrants from Pakistan, Egypt, India, and Palestine who were racially profiled and detained following the September 11 attacks tell their personal stories in a collection which explores themes of transnationalism, racialization, and the global war on terror, and explains the human cost of suspending civil liberties after a wartime emergency.

"This groundbreaking book collects black women's personal recollections of their public and private lives during the period of legal segregation in the American South. Using first-person narratives, collected through oral history interviews, the book emphasizes women's role in their families and communities, treating women as important actors in the economic, social, cultural, and political life of the segregated South. By focusing on the commonalities of women's experiences, as well as the ways that women's lives differed from the experiences of southern black men, Living with Jim Crow analyzes the interlocking forces of racism and sexism"--Provided by publisher.

"In this volume, the powerful voices of Gulag survivors will become accessible to English-speaking audiences for the first time through oral histories, rather than written memoirs. It brings together interviews with men and women, members of the working class and intelligentsia, people who live in the major cities and those from the "provinces," and from an array of corrective hard labor camps and prisons across the former Soviet Union. Its aims are threefold: 1) to give a sense of the range of the Gulag experience and its consequences for Russian society; 2) to make the Gulag relevant to English-speaking readers by offering comparisons to historical catastrophes they are likely to know more about, such as the Holocaust; and 3) to discuss issues of oral history and memory in the cultural context of Soviet and post-Soviet society"--Provided by publisher.

In this final part to his bestselling A Force Like No Other series, Colin Breen brings together more compelling insider stories from RUC officers who served during the Troubles. 'A most powerful and unique insight into the world's most dangerous job in policing in the 1970s and '80s.' Henry McDonald, Observer and Guardian 'This book of real RUC insider anecdotes ... has, of course, the best possible sources - the cops themselves.' Hugh Jordan, Sunday World 'A Force Like No Other recalls the horrors of the Troubles but also some of the funnier stories of everyday life as a cop.' Stephen Gordon, Sunday Life

This volume of selected oral histories features the voices of Americans who lived through some of the most critical events shaping the nation's history since the Civil War. This first-of-a-kind compilation allows students, scholars, and other readers to explore the connections and disconnections between individual stories and broader historical themes by understanding how history plays out in individual lives. Comprised of oral history interviews drawn from some of the country's major collections, "Speaking History "presents a remarkable array of diverse American voices. Included here are fascinating, often moving accounts of everything from slavery to protest movements, world wars to work and leisure, forming a detailed mosaic of American life in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Supplemented with valuable historical context, this book demonstrates how oral history interviews can bring the past to life by linking individual experiences to larger historical narratives.

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Women were at the forefront of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, with the Arab Spring protests providing an unprecedented opportunity to make their voices heard. But these women also faced an intense backlash from Egypt's patriarchal authorities, with female activists subjected to sexual violence and intimidation by the regime and even fellow protestors. Centered on the testimonies of four women who each played a significant role in the protests, this book provides unique insight into women's experiences during the Egyptian Revolution, and into the methods of resistance these women developed in response to sexual violence. In the process, Hamzeh casts new light on the relationship between gendered and state violence, and argues that women's resistance to this violence is reshaping gender relations in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

More than five years after the United States military and coalition forces invaded Iraq, the Iraq War remains a controversial and divisive subject throughout the world. This wide-ranging book, the first truly comprehensive oral history of the war, captures the diverse viewpoints of the soldiers, policymakers, family members, and others whose lives it changed. Recorded here are gripping battlefield accounts from veterans, the passionate testimonies of conscientious objectors and war supporters, reflections from nuclear inspectors and diplomats, and the varied perspectives of public figures from all across the political spectrum. This illuminating and moving book is an essential document of one of the defining conflicts of the twenty-first century.