1st Edition

An Anthology of African Cultural Studies, Volume II Directions

Edited By Handel Kashope Wright, Keyan G. Tomaselli Copyright 2025
302 Pages
by Routledge

302 Pages
by Routledge

302 Pages
by Routledge

This volume focuses on the directions that African cultural studies has taken over the years and covers the following central themes: contemporary issues in African cultural studies; Gender and the making of identity; the dual discourses of Afropessimism and Afrofuturism; problematizing the African diaspora and methodology and African cultural studies.   The second of two volumes, the book... Read more

Directions: Introduction to An Anthology of African Cultural Studies, Volume II
Handel Kashope Wright and Keyan G. Tomaselli

 

Part I – African Cultural Studies: Directions

 

1. Contemporary orientations in African Cultural Studies

Jesse Arseneault, Sarah D’Adamo, Helene Strauss and Handel Kashope Wright

 

2. Cultural studies and the African Global South

Keyan G. Tomaselli

 

3. What has African Cultural Studies done for you lately? Autobiographical and global

considerations of a floating signifier

Handel Kashope Wright

 

Part II – Putting African Gender to Work

 

4. (West) African feminisms and their challenges

Naomi Nkealah

 

5. The female body in audiovisual political propaganda jingles: the Mbare Chimurenga Choir in Zimbabwe’s contested political terrain

Hazel Tafadzwa Ngoshi and Anias Mutekwa

 

6. Stylin’: The great masculine enunciation and the (re)fashioning of

African diasporic identities

Christine Checinska

 

Part III – Afropessimism/Afrofuturism

 

7. Afropessimism: a genealogy of discourse

Boulou Ebanda de B’béri and P. Eric Louw

 

8. The roots of Afropessimism: The British invention of the ‘dark continent’

Noah R. Bassil

 

9. Rainbow Worriers: South African Afropessimism Online
Martha Evans

 

10. ‘Did He Freeze?’: Afrofuturism, Africana Womanism, and Black Panther’s Portrayal of the Women of Wakanda
Tiffany Thames Copeland

 

 

 

 

11. Fashioning Africanfuturism: African comics, Afrofuturism, and Nnedi  

Okorafor’s Shuri
James Hodapp

Part IV – Troubling the African Diaspora

 

12. Random thoughts provoked by the conference “Identities, democracy, culture

and communication in Southern Africa”
Stuart Hall

 

13. Marcus Garvey: the remapping of Africa and its diaspora

Rupert Lewis

 

14. Whose Diaspora is this anyway? Continental Africans trying on

and troubling diasporic identity
Handel Kashope Wright

 

15. Marking the unmarked: Hip-hop, the gaze & the African body in North America

Awad Ibrahim

 

16. Constructing consciousness: Diasporic remembrances and imagining Africa in late modernity

Jacinta K. Muteshi

 

Part V – Methodology and African Cultural Studies

 

17. Cultural Studies as ‘Psycho-babble’

Keyan G Tomaselli

 

18. South Africa in the global neighbourhood: Towards a method of cultural

Analysis

Michael Chapman

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19. Cultural studies as praxis: (making) an autobiographical case

Handel Kashope Wright

 

20. Navigating the African archive – A conversation between Tamar Garb and Hlonipha

Mokoena

Tamar Garb and Hlonipha Mokoena

Biography

Handel Kashope Wright is Senior Advisor to the President on Anti-racism and Inclusive Excellence, Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education and Professor of Education, University of British Columbia and Senior Research Associate, University of Johannesburg. He is also Associate Editor of Critical Arts.  

 

Keyan G. Tomaselli is Distinguished Professor, Dean’s Office, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, and Professor Emeritus and Fellow, University of KwaZulu-Natal.  He is founder and now co-editor of Critical Arts.