Overview

Until the 1960s and the advent of African independence, African history was rarely concerned with African lives. Africans were not considered fitting subjects or authoritative sources for historical research and their voices and experiences were largely absent from the continent's history. Efforts to restore African expression to African history have characterised of much of postcolonial historical research and writing, but questions about the use of oral sources in the quest for truth continue to plague interpreters and interpretations of the African past. African Words, African Voices shows African historians involved with and committed to developing unique methodologies for dealing with history on their own terms. African historians from North America, Europe, and Africa, confront questions such as the relationship between a community's oral and written history, the role of personal histories, the effects of racism and colonialism, the suppression of facts, and how historians should mediate and interpret research data. Focusing on all areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, the essays brought together here reflect the extraordinary range of engagement that represents the state-of-the-art of African history writing. For readers at all levels, African Words, African Voices is a lively and provocative volume that evokes the richness and relevance of oral sources for understanding a complex past. Contributors include E. J. Alagoa, David William Cohen, Laura Fair, Babacar Fall, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Isabel Hofmeyr, Abdullahi A. Ibrahim, Corinne A. Kratz, Stephan F. Miescher, Bethwell Allan Ogot, Megan Vaughan, Luise White and Kwesi Yankah.

Full Product Details

Author:   Luise S. White ,  Stephan F. Miescher ,  David William Cohen
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.458kg
ISBN:  

9780253214683

ISBN 10:   0253214688
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   05 December 2001
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Preliminary Table of Contents: Introduction: Voices, Words, and African History David William Cohen, Stephan F. Miescher, and Luise White Part 1. Giving Africa a History 1. The Construction of Luo Identity and History Bethwell Allan Ogot 2. Reported Speech and Other Kinds of Testimony Megan Vaughan 3. John Bunyan, His Chair, and a Few Other Relics: Orality, Literacy, and the Limits of Area Studies Isabel Hofmeyr 4. The Dialogue Between Academic and Community History in Nigeria E. J. Alagoa 5. The Birth of the Interview: The Thin and the Fat of It Abdullahi A. Ibrahim Part 2. African Lives 6. Conversations and Lives Corinne A. Kratz 7. The Life Histories of Boakye Yiadom (Akasease Kofi of Abetifi, Kwawu): Exploring the Subjectivity and ""Voices"" of a Teacher-Catechist in Colonial Ghana Stephan F. Miescher 8. Lives, Histories, and Sites of Recollection Tamara Giles-Vernick 9. Senegalese Women in Politics: A Portrait of Two Female Leaders, Arame Diène and Thioumbé Samb, 1945-1996 Babacar Fall Part 3. African Imaginations 10. Nana Ampadu, the Sung-Tale Metaphor, and Protest Discourse in Contemporary Ghana Kwesi Yankah 11. Voice, Authority, and Memory: The Kiswahili Recordings of Siti binti Saadi Laura Fair 12. In a Nation of White Cars . . . One White Car, or ""A White Car,"" Becomes a Truth David William Cohen 13. True Stories: Narrative, Event, History, and Blood in the Lake Victoria Basin Luise White Names of Conference Participants Contributors Index"

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Author Information

Luise White teaches African history at the University of Florida. She is author of The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (for which she won the Herskovits Prize) and Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Stephan F. Miescher Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is co-editor (with Lisa Lindsay) of Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa and is preparing a book on the construction of masculinities in twentieth-century Ghana. David William Cohen is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is author of The Historical Tradition of Busoga, Uganda: Mukama and Kintu; Womunafu's Bunafu; and Towards a Reconstructed Past: Historical Texts from Busoga, Uganda. He is co-author of Siaya: A Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape; Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa; and The Combing of History (all with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo). With E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, he is writing on the multiple investigations into the disappearance and death of Kenya's Foreign Minister, Robert Ouko.

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