Narrating War and Peace in Africa (47) (Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora)

Narrating War and Peace in Africa interrogates conventional representations of Africa and African culture -- mainly in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries -- with an emphasis on portrayals of conflict and peace. While Africa has experienced political and social turbulence throughout its history, more recent conflicts seem to reinforce the myth of barbarism across the continent: in Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique, Chad, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Sudan. The essays in this volume address reductive and stereotypical assumptions of postcolonial violence as "tribal" in nature, and offer instead various perspectives -- across disciplinary boundaries -- that foster a less fetishized, more contextualized understanding of African war, peace, and memory. Through their geographical, historical, and cultural scope and diversity, the chapters in Narrating War and Peace in Africa aim to challenge negative stereotypes that abound in relation to Africa in general and to its wars and conflicts in particular, encouraging a shift to more balanced and nuanced representations of the continent and its political and social climates. Contributors: Ann Albuyeh, Zermarie Deacon, Alicia C. Decker, Aména Moïnfar, Kayode Omoniyi Ogunfolabi, Sabrina Parent, Susan Rasmussen, Michael Sharp, Cheryl Sterling, Hetty ter Haar, Melissa Tully, Pamela Wadende, Metasebia Woldemariam, Jonathan Zilberg. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Hetty ter Haar is an independent researcher in England.

Table of Contents



Introduction: Narrating War and Peace in Africa

Wars of Words: Enlisting Colonial Languages in the Fight for Independence in Africa

Alternative Representations of War in Africa: New Times and Ethiopia News Coverage of the 1935-1941 Italian-Ethiopian War

All's Well in the Colony: Newspaper Coverage of the Mau Mau Movement, 1952-1956

Pedagogies of Pain: Teaching "Women, War, and Militarism in Africa"

Women and War: A Kenyan Experience

Mass Rape as a Weapon of War in the Eastern DRC

Mozambique: The Gendered Impact of Warfare

Acting as Heroic: Creativity and Political Violence in Tuareg Theater in Northern Mali

Representations of War and Peace in Selected Works of Ben Okri

Visions of War, Testaments of Peace: The "Burden" of Sierra Leone

(Re)Writing the Massacre of Thiaroye

In Search of Lost Kabyles in Mehdi Lallaoui's La colline aux oliviers

"Lament for the Casualties": The Nigerian War of 1967-1970 and the Poetry of John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo

Toyin Falola is the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Hetty Ter Haar is an independent researcher in England.