"An indispensable part of the history of the skills and ideas of mankind."—Scientific American.The art of the Fang, the BaTeke, the BaKota, and other... African peoples is extraordinarily vigorous and shows a brilliant sense of form. The substantial aesthetic impact that their works have had on the development of twentieth-century Western art—on Picasso, Derain, Braque, and Modigliani, among others—continues to this day. This classic study reveals the astonishing variety and expressive power of the art of a continent that contains more distinct peoples and cultures than any other. The revised edition has been updated throughout, incorporating recent research and additional illustrations, plus a new chapter and extended bibliography. It remains an invaluable resource for students and for anyone interested in African art. 291 illustrations, 88 in color

The third edition of Africana Studies: A Survey of Africa and the African Diaspora is an update of the second edition (1998) and incorporates new... chapters that include expanded coverage of issues on women, health, terrorism, the African Union, and many others, as well as the most recent theories and methods in Africana studies. To date, Africana Studies remains the most comprehensive and most suitable text for both teachers and students interested in Africa and the Diaspora in the US, the Caribbean, Afro-Latin-America, and elsewhere.The book is divided into five parts: the state of the art of Africana studies; the evolution of the history of black people; analysis of the contributions of the black world; the present and future status of these peoples; and the societies and values of black people. The book also includes a chronology of significant events in the history of peoples of African descent and a number of maps.

NOT AVAILABLE SEPARATELY. A classic for the new millennium! Through dialogs supported by grammar explanation and practice and vocabulary building, EL... ARTE DE LA CONVERSACIÓN, EL ARTE DE LA COMPOSICIÓN offers intermediate and advanced students both compelling topics to discuss, and the guidance to do so effectively.

An insightful and comprehensive compilation of the year’s events, this record offers in-the-moment comment and analysis as well as informed reflection... on the 2011 African uprisings. While the tumultuous uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have seized the attention of media analysts, the concurrent rebellions in Benin, Gabon, Senegal, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, and in other parts of the African continent have gone virtually unnoticed. Arguing that these disturbances are the result of decades of declining living standards, mass unemployment, land dispossessions, and impoverishment of the majority, this account provides an overview of the struggle for democratization, which constitutes a reawakening of the spirit of freedom and justice for all.

In 1945, John H. Johnson published the first issue of Ebony magazine, a monthly periodical aimed at African American readers. In 1973, the Johnson... Publishing Company expanded its readership to include children by producing Ebony Jr!. Targeting Black children in the five to eleven age-range, the magazine featured stories, comics, puzzles, and cartoons. Its contents combined elements of Black culture, Black history, and elementary school curriculum. The publication remained in print until 1985 and was resurrected online in 2007.In Ebony Jr! The Rise, Fall and Return of a Black Children's Magazine, Laretta Henderson charts this unique publication's genesis, history, and impact. She analyzes the structure and literary context of Ebony Jr!, revealing how the political climate informed the composition of the magazine. Henderson also profiles the magazine's publisher, John H. Johnson, and examines how his corporate structure facilitated and informed Ebony Jr!'s content, success, and its initial demise.This culturally significant milestone in African American culture is given its due deference in this interdisciplinary examination of the environment in which Ebony Jr! was produced, assessing what the magazine's existence meant to a generation of young readers.

By placing Africana womanism, an evolutionary Africana paradigm, within a literary context, this book expands the layered meanings of this... family-centered, race-based theory and applies them to the works and ideas of renowned international literary figures such as Toni Morrison, Paula Marshall, and Buchi Emecheta.

Throughout the Upland South, the  banjo has become an emblem of white mountain folk, who are generally credited with creating the short-thumb-string... banjo, developing its downstroking playing styles and repertory, and spreading its influence to the national consciousness. In this groundbreaking study, however, Cecelia Conway demonstrates that these European Americans borrowed the banjo from African Americans and adapted it to their own musical culture. Like many aspects of the African-American tradition, the influence of black banjo music has been largely unrecorded and nearly forgotten—until now.Drawing in part on interviews with elderly African-American banjo players from the Piedmont—among the last American representatives of an African banjo-playing tradition that spans several centuries—Conway reaches beyond the written records to reveal the similarity of pre-blues black banjo lyric patterns, improvisational playing styles, and the accompanying singing and dance movements to traditional West African music performances. The author then shows how Africans had, by the mid-eighteenth century, transformed the lyrical music of the gourd banjo as they dealt with the experience of slavery in America.By the mid-nineteenth century, white southern musicians were learning the banjo playing styles of their African-American mentors and had soon created or popularized a five-string, wooden-rim banjo. Some of these white banjo players remained in the mountain hollows, but others dispersed banjo music to distant musicians and the American public through popular minstrel shows.By the turn of the century, traditional black and white musicians still shared banjo playing, and Conway shows that this exchange gave rise to a distinct and complex new genre—the banjo song. Soon, however, black banjo players put down their banjos, set their songs with increasingly assertive commentary to the guitar, and left the banjo and its story to white musicians. But the banjo still echoed at the crossroads between the West African griots, the traveling country guitar bluesmen, the banjo players of the old-time southern string bands, and eventually the bluegrass bands.The Author: Cecelia Conway is associate professor of English at Appalachian State University. She is a folklorist who teaches twentieth-century literature, including cultural perspectives, southern literature, and film.

Integrates the historical, cultural, political, and developmental considerations of the African American experience into a theory for the education... achievement of African American children.

African-Centered Psychology: Culture-Focusing for Multicultural Competence addresses various topics on the psychology of African people. Although most... analyses focus on the African-U.S. diaspora, Azibo articulates principles that are applicable to most African populations. The book opens with an introduction to the field of black psychology, its history, and its relationship to western psychology. Theories of personality are discussed, as well as a review of the diagnostic manuals of mental disorders in western psychology and psychiatry. Furthermore, Azibo suggests a restructuring of social work that respects African culture; reports the favorable results of an African-centered treatment approach; describes a Ghanaian approach to adjusting to widowhood; and reviews psychological factors related to using condoms for HIV prevention in the African-U.S. population. He also discusses issues involving contemporary hair behavior among African-U.S. women; psychological warfare tactics used by the U.S. government against revolutionary activists; and how the media can create images affecting African identity. The book concludes with empirical research studies of African identity.

This book is designed as a textbook for use in seminaries, Bible colleges and universities that have sprouted with vigor in Africa. It is ideologically... driven to build a group of church historians who will tell the story of African Christianity, not Christianity in Africa, as an African story, by intentionally privileging the patterns of African agency without neglecting the noble roles played by missionaries. The effort has been to identify the major themes or story lines in African encounters and in the appropriation of the gospel. The project has enabled these historians to work together, in an ecumenical spirit, from across many boundaries: faith, region, gender, and ancestral race. They have bequeathed to future generations to tell more of the story of where the rain of the gospel met Africans before the deluge that appears on the horizon. Contributors: Afe Adogame David A. Kpobi Akintunde E. Akinade Tinyiko Sam Maluleke William B. Anderson P.J. Maritz J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu J.N.K. Mugambi Graham Duncan Philomena Njeri Mwaura Paul H. Gundani Chukwudi A.. Njoku Jehu Hanciles Nyambura J. Njoroge J.W. Hofmeyr Kenneth Sawyer Lizo Jafta Youhana Youssef Ogbu U. Kalu "Kalu and an accomplished team of collaborators bring off in this book what has never been accomplished before a thorough, carefully researched, interpretatively rich history of Christianity in Africa written by Africans. The depth of insights is as pervasive as the coverage is complete. This is a picture of a Christianity that shares much with other Christianities around the world but also is distinctly African." -Christian Century, October 17, 2006

"This is by far the most informative book about contemporary African Christianity around; nobody could have written a study as richly detailed and as... informed by real insider knowledge as he has done.... It will be the most significant study of African Christianity to appear at a time when its importance for Africa is becoming ever more widely recognized." —J. D. Y. Peel"A sophisticated political and social analysis of the various Christian groups is allied to a most original, consistent exploration of their different theological positions and thinking.... An interesting, important critical assessment of the extent to which the churches are playing a major role in the emergence of a civil society.... Gifford's overall analysis and his four case studies are so fresh and so important that... they cry out for immediate publication." —Richard GrayPaul Gifford analyzes African Christianity in the mid-1990s, against the background of the continent's current social, economic, and political circumstances. Gifford employs concepts taken from political economy to shed light on the current dynamics of African churches and churchgoers and assesses their different contributions to political developments since 1989. He also evaluates the churches' role in promoting a civil society in Africa. Four case studies—Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, and Cameroon—cover all strands of Christianity: Catholic, Evangelical, mainline Protestant, Pentecostal, and Independent. These detailed analyses of the state of the churches in each country also suggest more general patterns operating widely across sub-Saharan Africa.

The first part of this book traces the development of African cinema, from colonization to Afrocentrism, through themes such as the decolonization of... the imagination and the quest for legendary African origins. The second part of the book analyzes specific films, particularly through narrative and in terms of their African specificity. Finally, the author explores the social and economic contexts of the African cinema and television industry. Winner of the French National Film Center’s best film book of and now available in four languages, this is book which takes us into a process of learning how to look.

As African societies come to live more and more in cities, they do so in ways that challenge prevailing theories and models of urban development in... geography, sociology, anthropology, and planning. This book uses African urban concepts and experiences to speak back to theoretical and practical concerns in urban studies and disciplines that study cities, as well as in African studies. It argues for a re-vision  a seeing again, and a revising  of how cities in Africa are discussed and written about in both urban studies and African studies. Cities in Africa still are either ignored, banished to a different, other, lesser category of not-quite cities, or held up as examples of all that can go wrong with urbanism in much of both the mainstream and even critical urban literature. This book encourages African studies and urban studies scholars across the world to engage with the vibrancy and complexity of African cities with fresh eyes. It uses the author's own research and a close reading of works by other scholars, writers, and artists on a broad range of sixteen cities in Africa to highlight six themes that help illuminate what is happening in and across the region's cities.