African Studies Reading Room
607 Butler Library
- About the Collection
This special non-circulating collection on African history and the humanities is located on the 6th floor of Butler Library, opposite the elevators on the east side of the building. Since its grand opening in December 2003, the African Studies Reading Room collection has continued to grow slowly and will eventually reach full capacity at 6,200 volumes.
The advanced or novice scholar is invited to browse the books and to be immersed in a quiet and intellectually inspiring context. Announcements about library resources, literary and other major current events --local and international-- are posted on a regular basis in the room. On the shelves, one can find an array of selected African studies reference titles standing alongside hundreds of great works of African literature, collected historical documents from Africa, classic ethnographies and travellers' accounts, written transcriptions of Africa’s oral heritage --history, epic poetry, folktales, songs, and proverbs-- and major contributions in the interpretation of Africa’s past and present and of the African diasporas’ engagement with the continent.
Many of the titles selected are winners of prizes such as the Melville J. Herskovits Award for the Best Book on Africa awarded every year by the African Studies Association of the United States; Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century issued in 2002; The Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa ; as well as The Nobel Prize for Literature and The Man Booker Prize.
The collection includes a representative sample of Africa’s literature and history written in African languages, such as Hausa, Igbo, Bamanan, Mandinka, Pulaar/Fulfulde, Swahili, Wolof, Yoruba, and Zulu ; with the corresponding African language/English dictionaries. There are also some works in Arabic, but most are in English, French, or Portuguese, and a few in German.
Also on offer are the Annual Papers of the African Literature Association and other Africana conference proceedings, seminal works on African art, music, and film --including publications from the Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou (FESPACO), as well as back issues of some of the most important humanities journals published in Africa or by Africans during the twentieth century, such as Bulletin de l'Institut d'Afrique Noire (Dakar), Transition (Kampala), Odu (Ibadan), Black Orpheus (Ibadan), and Présence africaine (Paris). In addition, you will
find the back issues of key African studies journals published in North America and the UK, including African Affairs, African Studies Review,
Canadian Journal of African Studies, Journal of African History, Journal of Modern African Studies, and Journal of Southern African Studies.
- A Sample List from 2005-2006:
-- African gender studies: a reader / edited by Oyèrónké Oyewùmí. New York: Palgrave, 2005.
-- Africana: the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience / edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
5 vols. Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
-- Amadou Hampâté Bâ, homme de science et de sagesse: mélanges pour le centième anniversaire de la naissance d’Hampaté Bâ / sous la direction de Amadou Touré et Ntji Idriss Mariko. Paris: Karthala; Bamako: Nouvelles éditions maliennes, c2005.
-- Beti, Mongo. Africains si vous parliez. Paris: Homnisphères, c2005.
-- A companion to African philosophy / edited by Kwesi Wiredu et al. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004.
-- Daly, M.W. and Jane R. Hogan. Images of empire: photographic sources for the British in the Sudan. Boston: Brill, 2005.
-- Danish sources for the history of Ghana, 1657-1754 / edited by Ole Justesen; translated by J. Manley. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2005.
-- Doortmont, Michel R. The pen-pictures of modern Africans and African celebrities by Charles Francis Hutchison: a collective biography of elite society in the Gold Coast Colony. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005.
-- Encyclopedia of African history / edited by Kevin Shillington. 3 vols.
New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005.
-- Encyclopedia of African literature / edited by Simon Gikandi. London;
New York: Routledge, 2003.
-- Entre tradition orale et nouvelles technologies: où vont les mass média au Sénégal? / sous la direction de Martin Taureg et Frank Wittmann; préface de Hamidou Dia. Dakar: Enda, c2005.
-- Furniss, Graham, Malami Buba, and William Burgess. Bibliography of Hausa popular fiction 1987-2002. Köln: Köppe, 2004.
-- Groundings: Walter Rodney commemoration: 25 years after assassination, Guyana, June 2005. Programme. [S.l.: Walter Rodney 25th Anniversary Commemoration Committee, 2005]
-- Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Slavery and African ethnicities in the Americas: restoring the links. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c2005.
-- Jóob, Bubakar Boris. Doomi golo: nettali. Dakar, Senegal: Editions Papyrus Afrique, c2003. [A novel in Wolof by Boubacar Boris Diop.]
-- Kathrada, Ahmed. Memoirs. Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004.
-- Matory, James Lorand. Black Atlantic religion: tradition, transnationalism, and matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2005.
-- Miescher, Stephan F. Making men in Ghana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c2005.
-- La mémoire du Congo: le temps colonial. Gand [Belgium]: Editions Snoeck; Tervuren [Belgium]: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, c2005. [Exposition "La mémoire du Congo. Le temps colonial," held at the Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Feb. 4-Oct. 9, 2005.]
-- Nesbitt, Francis Njubi. Race for sanctions : African Americans against apartheid, 1946-1994. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c2004.
-- Nketia, J.H. Kwabena. The creative potential of African art music in Ghana: a personal testimony. Accra, Ghana: Afram Publications, 2004.
-- Owomoyela, Oyekan. Yoruba proverbs. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, c2005. [Parallel texts in Yoruba & English.]
-- The road to democracy in South Africa. Vol. 1 (1960-70). Cape Town: Zebra Press; South African Democracy Education Trust, 2004-
-- Saints, biographies, and history in Africa / Bertrand Hirsch, Manfred Kropp, eds.
New York: Peter Lang, 2004.
-- Tignor, Robert L., W. Arthur Lewis and the birth of development economics.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2006.
-- Women writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel / edited by Esi Sutherland-Addy and Aminata Diaw. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005.
-- Writing African history / edited by John Edward Philips. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005.
-- Zawawi, Sharifa M. Kanga: the cloth that speaks. The Bronx, N.Y.: Azaniya Hills Press, c2005.
|
|
|
