RENT TEXTBOOKS

by: Soyinka-Airewele, Peyi

ISBN: 9780872894075 | 087289407X

It is impossible to study Africa without understanding the debate about how to study Africa. At last, a book showcases the complexities and paradoxes of Africa¿s recent and more distant history, while avoiding simplistic, Eurocentric conceptualizations of ¿black Africa.¿ Students are offered the background and perspectives they need to comprehend the dynamics of the continent as well as a clear path through the current literature and scholarly debate. With a cross-disciplinary approach that features political, historical, and economic analysis ... MOREas well as popular culture and sociological views on contemporary issues, Reframing Contemporary Africa provides an unparalleled breadth of coverage. Essays written by a distinguished and international group of scholars¿including Pius Adesanmi, Anene Ejikeme, Caroline Elkins, Mahmood Mamdani, Siba Grovogui, Wole Soyinka, and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza¿are designed to distill original scholarship for undergraduate readers. Each contribution helps students engage with the work and arguments of luminaries while exposing them to renowned African thinkers. Contributors deliver analysis that allows students to see beyond the clichés commonly presented in the media (and even in scholarship), and helpful section openers by Soyinka-Airewele and Edozie frame forthcoming chapters, giving important thematic and historical context. Reframing Contemporary Africa will certainly provoke new debate and reflection, not merely about African issues and politics, but also about the West and its framing of Africa.

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Examining this area from political, historical, as well as popular culture and sociological perspectives, this text provides readers with a background that will allow them to study Africa with a new understanding of both the history of the continent itself and the literature and debates that surround it.

Peyi Soyinka-Airewele is associate professor of African and international politics at Ithaca College, New York. Her publications include, most recently, Socio-Political Scaffolding and the Construction of Chang, coedited with Kelechi Kalu, and her work on democratic development, collective memory, and cathartic violence has been published in several scholarly journals including the Journal of African and Asian Studies, the Journal of Third World Studies, and West Africa Review. She has served as the International Director of ACT Africa and is currently the president of the Association of Third World Studies Inc. Rita Kiki Edozie is professor of international relations at Michigan State University. She is the author of People Power and Democracy: The Popular Movement against Military Despotism in Nigeria, 1989-1999 and Reconstructing Africa's Third Wave: Comparative African Democratic Politics. She has contributed scholarly articles and book chapters to several edited volumes and academic journals.