Digital communication as it is practiced in Africa today is at a crossroad. This edited collection takes that crossroad as its starting point, as it both examines the complicated present and looks to the uncertain future of African communication systems. Contributing authors explore how western digital communication systems have proliferated in the African communication landscape, and argue that rich and long-cherished African forms of communal, in-person communication have been increasingly abandoned in favor of assimilation to western digital norms. As a result, future generations of Africans born on the continent and abroad may never recognize and appreciate African systems of communications. Acknowledging that globalized digital communication systems are here to stay, the volume contends that in order to comprehend the past, present, and future of African communications, scholars need to decolonize their approach to teaching and consuming mediated and in-person communications on the African continent and abroad.
When “African Theology” was first formulated, women played just a small role. In 1989 Mercy Amba Oduyoye set out to change this by creating the Circle of Concerned African Theologians in order to give them a voice. The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians is an African Baby, born in an ecumenical surrounding. Though there were other movements addressing the issue of gender inequalities in church and society, circle theologies are distinct from other women's liberation movements in that they are theologies formed in the context of African culture and religion. This book traces the Circle history from 1989 to 2007.
The essays in this volume take up the challenge of working out -- or reworking -- the problematics of the borders, the boundaries and the frameworks that structure our various and multiple notions of identity -- textual, personal, collective, generic, and disciplinary. The contributors to this volume write about subjects (and are often themselves subjects) who "refuse to occupy a single territory" -- who cross geographical, cultural, national, linguistic, generic, specular and disciplinary borders. Essays by Kathryn Hellerstein, Anita Goldman, Jane Marcus and Scott Malcomson exlpore the semiotics of exile and the problem of its representation in the lives and writings of individual aritists and intellectuals. Autobiographical criticism, as represented in the essays by Nancy Miller and Sara Suleri, enlargess our conventional notions of what consitutes literature in general and criticism in particular.
Donegan and the Panama Canal is a fictionalized, first person story of why and how the United States built a canal in Panama in 1903. This story is a sequel to Mr. Morrisseys previous novel of the Spanish-American War, Donegan and the Splendid Little War. No one had previously written an historical novel of either of these events. The title character of Donegan and the Panama Canal is Patrick Donegan (1875-1958), the son of Irish immigrants to Philadelphia. Donegan belatedly wrote this memoir in 1953, but his grandson Thomas Morrissey did not publish it for another fifty years. Patrick Donegan had previously served on a Spanish merchant ship for two years before its captain stranded him in Santiago de Cuba in 1895. He became a war profiteer during the Cuban revolt against Spain, and wrote propaganda articles for the Cubans before William Randolph Hearst hired him to write for the New York Journal. Donegan and the Splendid Little War relates how Donegan wrote biased pro-Cuban stories for Hearst. He telegrammed a misleading account of the explosion of the American battleship Maine, which ultimately caused the United States to declare war on Spain. He accompanied Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in their famous charge up San Juan Hill. He published an exclusive, eyewitness account of President McKinleys assassination, but Hearst fired him when Joseph Pulitzer discovered that Donegan had written a short poem that may have inspired McKinleys assassin. Donegan left the field of journalism and secretly became a lobbyist for the Panama Canal. Donegan and the Panama Canal tells the story how Hearst ordered Donegan, a year before he fired him in 1901, to sail around South America and disembark at the west coast of Nicaragua. Hearst, a Nicaraguan Canal partisan, did not know that Donegan had already promised Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a French engineer who had served in Ferdinand de Lesseps earlier ill-fated attempt to build a canal in Panama, that he would support a Panama Canal. Captain Michael Healy piloted the ship that carried Donegan during their long journey through the Strait of Magellan to Central America. Donegan traveled through Nicaragua, and interviewed her president and the American minister. He wrote many negative articles about Nicaragua, and warned the American public that many active and dangerous volcanoes flourished in Nicaragua that could easily destroy any canal built there. Hearst appointed Donegan to cover the Washington political scene when he returned to New York. Donegan accompanied Philippe Bunau-Varilla when this French lobbyist promoted the Panama Canal in many speeches throughout the United States. Bunau-Varilla convinced Senator Mark Hanna, President William McKinleys eminence grise, that the Panama site was preferable to Nicaragua. McKinley remained non-committal about where to build the canal, but Senator John Tyler Morgan of Alabama, the chief Nicaragua advocate, viciously attacked Philippe and Donegans Panama site. After Hearst fired him after President McKinleys assassination, Donegan sailed to France where he met William Nelson Cromwell, the legal representative of the Panama Railroad and the New Panama Canal Company. Donegan agreed to work with Cromwell on the canal question although he personally despised him. Donegan conferred with Bunau-Varilla in France, but they quickly returned to America when they heard that Congress would soon vote on whether the canal should be built in Panama or Nicaragua. All seemed lost when the House of Representatives overwhelmingly supported Nicaragua. Bunau-Varilla influenced the French Canal Company to lower the price for its canal concession, and Donegan influenced President Roosevelt, who previously favored Nicaragua, to support the Panama site. Congress had to make the final decision about the canal site. Senator Morgans Committee on Interoceanic Canals supported the Nicaragua Canal. Morgan and other senators argued that no can
Louis G. Perez revisits Japan's turbulent past and recent events in the past decade and 21st Century in this revised and fully expanded second edition of The History of Japan, a must-have for all high school and public libraries. This essential resource provides readers with a comprehensive look at Japan's long and rich history, examining its politics, culture, philosophy, and religious beliefs throughout the ages. Also included are up-to-date discussions of political situations, environmental issues, and even a glimpse into the cultural lives of the Japanese today. Students will learn who the Japanese are today, and how the past has shaped their contemporary society. An updated timeline, appendices, and glossary, along with an illustrative bibliographical essay that includes both print and electronic sources, round out this valuable reference tool. Roughly the same size as the state of California, the island nation of Japan is one of the world's most densely populated nations-not to mention an economic powerhouse and a mecca of advanced technology. But the Land of the Rising Sun did not always lead the world with its success in the automobile industry, innovative electronics, and powerful stock market. Louis G. Perez revisits Japan's turbulent past and recent events in the past decade and 21st Century in this revised and fully expanded second edition of The History of Japan, a must-have for all high school and public libraries. This essential resource provides readers with a comprehensive look at Japan's long and rich history, examining its politics, culture, philosophy, and religious beliefs throughout the ages. Also included are up-to-date discussions of political situations, environmental issues, and even a glimpse into the cultural lives of the Japanese today. Students will learn who the Japanese are today, and how the past has shaped their contemporary society. An updated timeline, appendices, and glossary, along with an illustrative bibliographical essay that includes both print and electronic sources, round out this valuable reference tool.
