This book examines how representations of African in the Anglophone West have changed in the post-imperial age. The period since the Second World War has seen profound changes in sub-Saharan Africa, notably because of decolonization, the creation of independent nation-states and the transformation of the relationships with the West. Using a range of case studies from news media, maps, popular culture, film and TV the contributions assess how narrative and counter-narratives have developed and been received by their audiences in light of these changes. Examining the overlapping areas between media representations and historical events, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of African Studies and Media and Cultural Studies.

This book provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the cinematic representations of the experiences of African women and girls in situations of political conflict. The role of cinema is important in providing information about the situation of women and girls in situations of political conflict, and the main characters often also become signifiers of wider social, political and economic ideas, at both global and local levels. Drawing on fictional and biographical cinematic representations, this book considers films covering a range of different regions, experiences, historical periods and other contexts, to draw a nuanced picture of African women and girls who participate in or are affected by African political conflicts. The films are analysed using a decolonial feminist cultural approach, which combines cultural approaches, African feminisms and the contrapuntal method to ensure an inter-textual, intersectional and decolonial examination. The book engages with multiple themes and topics, including nationalism, nation-building, neocolonialism, memory, history, women’s and girls’ agency and activism. Through these themes and topics, the book explores how the films represent African women’s and girls’ agency in relation to their participation in social, economic and political activities. This book will make a significant contribution to literature focused on African women and girls within politics, conflict studies and film studies.

The Unspeakable: Representations of Trauma in Francophone Literature and Art is situated at the crossroads of language, culture and genre; it contends that suffering transcends time, space and cultural specificity. Even when extreme trauma is silenced, it often still emerges in surprising and painful ways. This volume draws together examples from throughout the Francophone world, including countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Rwanda, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, New Caledonia, Quebec and France, and across genres such as autobiography, poetry, theater, film, fiction and visual art to provide a cohesive analysis of the representation of trauma. In addition to the survivors’ expression of trauma, the witnesses and receivers are also taken into account. By gathering studies that explore diverse bodily and psychological traumas through tropes such as repetition, silence and working-through, it tackles ethical responsibility and interrogates how expressive forms evoke a terrible reality through the use of imagination. The aim of this volume is not to question if suffering is representable, but rather to examine to what extent art surpasses its own limitations and goes straight to its essence. The Unspeakable hopes to provide models for the cultural translation of trauma, because, when represented and released from silence and isolation, trauma can give way to the arduous process of healing.

Colour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines. Colour exists as a cultural as well as psycho-physical phenomenon and acquires a multitude of meanings within differing historical and cultural contexts. The contributors examine how colour becomes imbued with specific symbolic and material meanings that tint our constructions of race, gender, ideal bodies, the relationship of the self to others and of the self to technology and the built environment. By highlighting the relationship of colour across media and material culture, this volume reveals the complex interplay of cultural connotations, discursive practices and socio-psychological dynamics of colour in an international context.

An overview of the key novels and novelists of the continent, covering multiple cultures and languages.