Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa

by Derek R. Peterson (Editor)

Overview

Caroline Peckham is a #1 Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com bestselling romance author who has sold over 7 million copies across her bestselling romantasy series, Zodiac Academy, as well as many more copies of her other fantasy and contemporary romance series. She co-writes full time with her sister, Susanne Valenti, and together the two of them work in their garden office in the UK, overlooking a lush green garden full of wildlife. They don’t shy away from cliff-hangers and challenging redemption arcs for their love interests, and their leading women are always strong-hearted with fierce souls, the kind that never give up no matter what the authors throw at them.

Susanne Valenti is a #1 Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com bestselling romance author who has sold over 7 million copies across her bestselling romantasy series, Zodiac Academy, as well as many more copies of her other fantasy and contemporary romance series. She co-writes full time with her sister, Caroline Peckham, and together the two of them work in their garden office in the UK, overlooking a lush green garden full of wildlife. They don’t shy away from cliff-hangers and challenging redemption arcs for their love interests, and their leading women are always strong-hearted with fierce souls, the kind that never give up no matter what the authors throw at them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821443361
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2009
Series:	New African Histories Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	880 KB

About the Author

Derek R. Peterson is Ali Mazrui Collegiate Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya, and editor of The Invention of Religion: Rethinking Belief in Politics and History.

Giacomo Macola is associate professor in African history at Sapienza Università di Roma and research fellow in the Centre for Africa Studies of the University of the Free State. The author of Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: A Biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, he has also coedited (with Derek Peterson) Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa.

Editorial Reviews

As a group, the contributors and editors of Recasting the Past constitute one of the most impressive cohorts of scholars brought together in a collective volume project in the past three decades. This work will be required reading for any individual venturing into serious study of Africa’s past.”—David William Cohen, The University of Michigan


“Collectively the authors of Recasting the Past are to be saluted, as are their editors. As an assertion of the vibrancy of Christian Africa’s history of ideas in the twentieth century, this collection could hardly be richer.”—International Journal of African Historical Studies


“This collection accomplishes what no monograph could because these nuanced inquiries each require deep expertise. The variety of questions posed here suggests many ways that professional historians could appreciate more fully the production of historical knowledge in Africa. Students of African intellectual history will come away better able to appreciate the deep and multiple roots that generate the production of culture in Africa.”—American Historical Review


“Despite the study of Africa’s intellectual history being curiously underdeveloped, the work in (Recasting the Past) confronts the idea that the study of African history is solely the preserve of professional historians.”—Political Studies Review


“This lively volume focuses on what the editors call Africa’s homespun historians: non-professionals who, throughout the twentieth century, devoted passionate and painstaking intellectual labor to recreating the past, often in vernacular languages.…(Recasting the Past) makes a welcome intervention in African intellectual history. In many ways, it is a model of the genre.”—Journal of African History


“These are magnificent essays. What this collection shows with great power and verve is that starting early in the last century Africans constructed their own historical accounts using various methods, frameworks, and analytical tools. It adds a dimension to our understanding of the African past—and the African understanding of the African past—that is long overdue.”
— Luise White, University of Florida

From the Publisher