Cultural Studies has evolved and continues to evolve primarily along regional lines. However uncomfortable this might be, the genie of British cultural studies cannot be returned to the bottle of history. Thus, national versions of cultural studies have arisen in a few African countries. This book engages two critical and seemingly contradictory tasks: i) to contribute to the development of cultural studies from the perspectives of African experiences and indigenous frames of reference; and ii) to examine these in terms of transnational trajectories of the field in ways that do not reduce them to one or other context. Much cultural studies remains concerned with Texts, often disconnected from their contexts. For the authors published here, the contexts include African philosophies, cosmologies and ontologies. It includes the writings of both residential natives and those who have re-located to the diaspora, a spread that opens conversations with international approaches that both include and exclude African experiences and work. This anthology juxtaposes many different kinds of cultural studies done in different parts of the world as a means of creating a global dialogue around the signifier of ‘Africa’. This book was published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

Frieda Ekotto, Kenneth W. Harrow, and an international group of scholars set forth new understandings of the conditions of contemporary African cultural production in this forward-looking volume. Arguing that it is impossible to understand African cultural productions without knowledge of the structures of production, distribution, and reception that surround them, the essays grapple with the shifting notion of what "African" means when many African authors and filmmakers no longer live or work in Africa. While the arts continue to flourish in Africa, addressing questions about marginalization, what is center and what periphery, what traditional or conservative, and what progressive or modern requires an expansive view of creative production.

In A Prescience of African Cultural Studies, Handel Kashope Wright makes an argument for undertaking a necessary paradigm shift: from literature studies in Africa to African Cultural Studies. There are several major themes in this text; in particular, it rejects mainstream notions of literature as (self)deceptively «apolitical» and decidedly non-utilitarian. As an alternative, Wright proposes African Cultural Studies as an African-centered discourse and praxis that incorporates written, oral, and performance forms, and overtly addresses political and sociocultural issues. He articulates African Cultural Studies in relation to existing cultural studies, its taken for granted British origin and genealogy, and its global trajectories. Finally, Wright elaborates on African Cultural Studies by reconceptualizing drama (emphasizing performance over written text), incorporating film and electronic media and exploring the potential contribution African cultural studies could make to both the discourse and process of development in Africa.

Everyday life in South Africa has been dominated by the politics of racial identities, while such identities form and re-form around a range of cultural activities and practices. This book traces the important dimensions of cultural activity in late twentieth-century South Africa, offering a multidisciplinary assessment between culture and politics. It also explores the ways in which the place of culture is being rethought since South Africa's transition to democracy.

As Black and African Studies programs emerged in the early 1970's, the question of who has the right and responsibility to determine course content and curriculum also emerged. In 1972, Dr. Ben's critique on this subject was published as Cultural Genocide in The Black and African Studies Curriculum. It has been republished several times since then and its topic has remained timely and unresolved.

In A Prescience of African Cultural Studies, Handel Kashope Wright makes an argument for undertaking a necessary paradigm shift: from literature studies in Africa to African Cultural Studies. There are several major themes in this text; in particular, it rejects mainstream notions of literature as (self)deceptively «apolitical» and decidedly non-utilitarian. As an alternative, Wright proposes African Cultural Studies as an African-centered discourse and praxis that incorporates written, oral, and performance forms, and overtly addresses political and sociocultural issues. He articulates African Cultural Studies in relation to existing cultural studies, its taken for granted British origin and genealogy, and its global trajectories. Finally, Wright elaborates on African Cultural Studies by reconceptualizing drama (emphasizing performance over written text), incorporating film and electronic media and exploring the potential contribution African cultural studies could make to both the discourse and process of development in Africa.

The Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America provides an accessible ready reference on the retention and continuity of African culture within the United States. Our conceptual framework holds, first, that culture is a form of self-knowledge and knowledge about self in the world as transmitted from one person to another. Second, that African people continuously create their own cultural history as they move through time and space. Third, that African descended people living outside of Africa are also contributors to and participate in the creation of African cultural history. Entries focus on illuminating Africanisms (cultural retentions traceable to an African origin) and cultural continuities (ongoing practices and processes through which African culture continues to be created and formed). Thus, the focus is more culturally specific and less concerned with the broader transatlantic demographic, political and geographic issues that are the focus of similar recent reference works. We also focus less on biographies of individuals and political and economic ties and more on processes and manifestations of African cultural heritage and continuity. FEATURES: A two-volume A-to-Z work, available in a choice of print or electronic formats 350 signed entries, each concluding with Cross-references and Further Readings 150 figures and photos Front matter consisting of an Introduction and a Reader’s Guide organizing entries thematically to more easily guide users to related entries Signed articles concluding with cross-references