Afro American Studies
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- Books
- Databases
- Journals
- Theses & Dissertations
- Course Guides
- Afro Am 117: Survey of African American Literature I
- Afro Am 118: Survey of African American Literature II
- Afro Am 170/171: The Multicultural Experience in American Life and Culture
- AFRO AM 222 Black Church In America
- Afro Am 236: History of the Civil Rights Movement
- Afro Am 254 Introduction to African Studies
- Welcome
- Citation Management
- If it's not at UMass, we'll get it for you - for free!
- Article databases
- Finding Books
- Afro Am 290c/753: The Blues
- Afro Am 293B: THE AFRICAN DIASPORA AND THE WAR ON DRUGS (Afro American Studies 293B
- Afro Am 297A: Black Springfield Matters
- Afro Am 326: Black Women in U.S. History
- Afro Am 331: The Life and Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois
- Afro Am 491C: Cuba: A Social History
- AFROAM 494DI: The W.E.B. Du Bois Senior Seminar
- Afro Am 365: Composition: Style and Organization (Junior Year Writing)
- Afro Am 605/History 797S: African Americans and the Movement to Abolish Slavery
- Afro Am 652/234: Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
- Afro Am 691C: Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies
- Afro Am 691C: Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies
- Afro Am 692G: African American Women's Narrative
- Afro Am 692U: Dynamics of Race and the Law
- Afro Am 701 & 702: Major Works in Afro American Studies
- English 891BB: African American Women Playwrights
- History 591FG: First Generation-Urbanism and Breaking Baseball's Color Barrier
- History 593K: African Americans in Antebellum New England
- History 594Z: Black Women’s Political Activism
- Black Women Suffragists
- Educ 218: Hip Hop Nation Language and Literacy Practices
- Journalism 395M: The African American Freedom Struggle and the Mass Media
- Microforms
- More resources...Toggle Dropdown
- How else are we going to do research when the library is closed?
Librarian
University of Massachusetts
Office hours Wednesdays 3-4:30, room 325, New Africa house. Also available by appointment. I can meet via phone, Zoom, or other online venue. To request an online appointment or get any other help, please email iespinal@library.umass.edu or call:
Welcome to the Library Guide for
AFROAM 254: Introduction to African Studies
Library Guide by Isabel Espinal, PhD, MLIS
Course taught by Professor Y. Covington-Ward, PhD
Spring 2024
This course explores the diversity of the many peoples, cultures, and societies of Africa, both past and present. Moving beyond stereotypes and commonly held misconceptions about Africa and Africans, the course takes a multidisciplinary approach drawing on history, ethnography, literature, and film to explore a range of issues and topics relevant to the every-day lived experiences of Africans. These include topics such as Ancient Africa, Africa under European colonialism, urban Africa, African livelihoods, ideas of kinship, memory and forgetting, the impact of war, experiences of migration, youth movements, health and healing, Nollywood and other African films, technology growth, and music and popular culture, among other topics. A comparative approach will be used to illuminate these topics, drawing upon case studies from various countries and regions of the African continent, as well as historical and literary sources. While our longer case study is based on Liberia, we will also draw on our main class reader and various articles and films for examples from other countries (such as Nigeria, Senegal, and South Sudan, among other countries).
Citation Management
Use a citation manager, such as Zotero to keep track of your research.
Put all your references in one place, create quick and easy bibliographies, build your knowledgebase for the rest of your career. For help, check out the online guides and webinars or Ask a Librarian.
Some tips on using Chicago notation style with Zotero.
If it's not at UMass, we'll get it for you - for free!
Use your Interlibrary Loan account to:
- Borrow books, videos, and other materials not available in the Five College system.
- Request electronic copies of articles and book chapters not available at UMass.
Article databases
- AllAfrica This link opens in a new windowNews stories from a full range of local newspapers from all over the African continent, 1997-present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- AfricaBib.org This link opens in a new windowAfricaBib is an index for Africana social science titles, including the Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature.Content is freely available for use by all.
- Historical Abstracts Full Text This link opens in a new windowJournal articles, many in full text, and citations to books and dissertations on world history from 1450, published 1954-present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowUse to access many UMass online journal subscriptions.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
You can access Google Scholar with UMLinks buttons from outside the UMass Amherst IP range ("off campus") by two methods:
1. Access Google Scholar through the Library web site by using this link.
2. Go to generic Google Scholar.
a. Click on "Settings."
b. Click on Library links.
c. Type in "University of Massachusetts" or "UMass Amherst" (or a few other variations).
d. Check "University of Massachusetts Amherst - UMass Check for Full Text" and Save.
e. You will be asked to authenticate somewhere along the way to full text. - MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowAn index to journal articles and other scholarly literature on literature, literary theory and criticism, linguistics, folklore, and (since 1996) film, 1920s -Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- Sociology Database This link opens in a new windowArticles from over 300 journals in full text in sociology and social work.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowCore scholarly journals from a range of disciplines, dating from the earliest issue of each journal to a few years before present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowScholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences published by university presses; searchable by journal issue, author, and keyword, 1996-present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new windowScholarly journals from all academic disciplines - an excellent starting point for multidisciplinary research projects. 3,200 full-text journals. Coverage from 1975 to present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
- Academic OneFileA large interdisciplinary collection of scholarly, professional and trade journal articles, 1980-present.Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Finding Books
To find books at UMass
Start with the Discovery Search, the general search box on the library home page, www.library.umass.edu.
This search gives you access to books and articles and more.
Citations can be exported directly to Zotero or other citation managers.
Some recent books in African Studies available at UMass:
- African Performance Arts and Political Acts by Naomi Andre; Yolanda Covington-Ward; Jendele HungboCall Number: NX180.P64 A39 2021 and onlineISBN: 9780472074822Publication Date: 2021African Performance Arts and Political Acts presents innovative formulations for how African performance and the arts shape the narratives of cultural history and politics. This collection, edited by Naomi André, Yolanda Covington-Ward, and Jendele Hungbo, engages with a breadth of African countries and art forms, bringing together speech, hip hop, religious healing and gesture, theater and social justice, opera, radio announcements, protest songs, and migrant workers' dances. The spaces include village communities, city landscapes, prisons, urban hostels, Township theaters, opera houses, and broadcasts through the airwaves on television and radio as well as in cyberspace. Essays focus on case studies from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania.
- African Women, ICT and Neoliberal Politics: The Challenge of Gendered Digital Divides to People-Centered Governance by Assata ZeraiCall Number: OnlineISBN: 1351363662Publication Date: 2018How can we promote people-centered governance in Africa? Cell phones/ information and communications technology (ICT) are shown to be linked to neoliberal understandings of more democratic governance structures, defined by the Worldwide Governance Indicators as: the rule of law, corruption-control, regulation quality, government effectiveness, political stability/no violence, and voice and accountability. However, these indicators fall short: they do note emphasize gender equity or pro-poor policies. Writing from an African feminist scholar-activist perspective, Assata Zerai emphasizes the voices of women in two ways: (1) she examines how women's access to ICT makes a difference to the success of people-centered governance structures; and (2) she demonstrates how African women's scholarship, too often marginalized, must be used to expand and redefine the goals and indicators of democratice governance in African countries. Challenging the status quo that praises the contributions of cell phones to the diffusion of knowledge and resultant better governance in Africa, this book is an important read for scholars of politics and technology, gender and politics, and African Studies.
- Barzakh: the Land In-Between by Moussa Ould EbnouCall Number: PQ3989.2.O7955 B37 2022ISBN: 9781957810003Publication Date: 2022In the distant future, while studying the land of Barzakh in the Sahara, members of the Institute for the Archeology of Human Thought unearth the bones of Gara, a young man, whose Myelin will unravel the secrets of his ancient consciousness. A foreigner in his own land, Gara, in search of a better humanity, has traveled through three eras, from the 11th-century deserts of Mauritania to the dystopic future, inadvertently sowing the seeds of his own destruction.
- Believers and Hustlers by Sylva Nze IfedigboCall Number: PR9387.9.I323 B45 2022ISBN: 1957810025Publication Date: 2022Pastor Nicholas Adejuwon and his beautiful wife Nkechi run Rivers of Joy Church, the rave-of-the-moment Lagos megachurch. The media-savvy supercouple project the picture of a perfect family and a prosperous church. However, there are scandalous secrets hidden under the surface. When Nkechi decided to investigate her husband's rumored indiscretion, it was merely to satisfy her curiosity. What she unravels is a web of bruising secrets that run deeper than she could ever imagine, threatening her reality as she knows it. Believers and Hustlers is an exposé on the underbelly of Nigeria's Pentecostal fervor and the lives of rich celebrity posterity preachers, their motivations, rivalries, pretenses, and fears. This bold novel tells an important story about our times - the quest for power, the fears that trigger it, the hypocrisy that sustains it - and how religion can be weaponized to shroud it all in a mystery. At its core, however, it's a story of life, of love, power, and the ironies that fate often deals us at the end of our desperate quests.
- COVID-19 and Education in Africa by Lydia Namatende-Sakwa (Editor); Sarah Lewinger (Editor); Catherine Langsford (Editor)Call Number: OnlineISBN: 1003269621Publication Date: 2022With comprehensive examples from researchers across East Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa, the book examines how primary, secondary, and tertiary education was affected by the pandemic and how its effects are shaping the future of education in Africa. This book addresses diverse issues relating to COVID-19 and education, including the gendered-, classed-, and disability-related effects of the pandemic; African educators' and students' experiences with different remote learning technologies; and the outcomes of government interventions in education, such as prolonged school closures. The chapters and case studies highlighted in the volume represent the voices of African educators, students, and parents as they share their experiences of the pandemic and their perspectives on how learning should be optimised to better manage future disruptions to education. This book is the first of its kind to comprehensively examine the effects of COVID-19 on education in Africa and will be essential reading for researchers, academics, and scholars of African education, international and comparative education, and education policy.
- Disability and Sexuality in Zimbabwe: Voices from the Periphery by Christine PetaCall Number: OnlineISBN: 9781315162218Publication Date: 2017Disabled women represent one of the most marginalised minority groups in the world, hence they are largely silent while their sexuality is ignored, suppressed, forbidden and buried underneath the carpet. Until recently, most of the Global Northern published literature on the subject of the sexuality of disabled women has predominantly been constructed from hearsay and second-hand narratives in studies which draw from the perspectives of parents, service providers and advocates, without much consultation of the relevant women. By facilitating the voice of disabled women in Zimbabwe and illuminating their experiences of sexuality, this book hopes to shift the experiences of sexuality of disabled women from the periphery of society to the fore. Disability and Sexuality in Zimbabwe presents original research on an issue that is thus far not found in local research data. Whilst addressing the paucity of literature on the subject, the book informs policy and practice and enhances the existing body of knowledge by making recommendations towards the development of a disability and sexuality framework that is rooted in the African context. This book is of interest to students and scholars of African studies, disability studies, sociology, psychology, social work, nursing, education studies, geography, women's and gender studies and interdisciplinary studies. Additional audiences include a wide range of health, social care, and educational professionals and practitioners, as well donors, disabled people's organisations, charities, government departments, NGOs, supranational organisations, and policy makers
- Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo by Yolanda Covington-WardCall Number: DT650.K66 C68 2016 and onlineISBN: 9780822360209Publication Date: 2016In Gesture and Power Yolanda Covington-Ward examines the everyday embodied practices and performances of the BisiKongo people of the Lower Congo to show how their gestures, dances, and spirituality are critical in mobilizing social and political action. Conceiving of the body as the center of analysis, a catalyst for social action, and as a conduit for the social construction of reality, Covington-Ward focuses on specific flash points in the last ninety years of Congo's troubled history, when embodied performance was used to stake political claims, foster dissent, and enforce power. In the 1920s Simon Kimbangu started a Christian prophetic movement based on spirit-induced trembling, which swept through the Lower Congo, subverting Belgian colonial authority. Following independence, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko required citizens to dance and sing nationalist songs daily as a means of maintaining political control. More recently, embodied performance has again stoked reform, as nationalist groups such as Bundu dia Kongo advocate for a return to precolonial religious practices and non-Western gestures such as traditional greetings. In exploring these embodied expressions of Congolese agency, Covington-Ward provides a framework for understanding how embodied practices transmit social values, identities, and cultural history throughout Africa and the diaspora.
- The Politics of Gender Reform in West Africa by Ludovic LadoCall Number: HQ519 .L33 2023ISBN: 9780268205072Publication Date: 2023This anthropological study offers a crucial contribution to scholarly debates about the making of African modernity by considering the implementation and reception of gender reform in the West African context. Historically, attempts at implementing gender reform in West Africa have been met with suspicion. Beyond the perception that such reforms subvert traditional structures of authority and community, many worry that these efforts are inextricably connected to Western imperialism and colonialism. Ludovic Lado's The Politics of Gender Reform in West Africa examines the politics of a legislative process entirely driven by the state and meant to narrow the gender gap in Ivorian society. Lado discusses the legislative processes by which states have sought to reduce the gender gap between men and women, probes the potential impact of this reform on the condition of women by exploring the practice of civil marriage in Abidjan, and assesses the reception of the reform among Catholics and Muslims in Côte d'Ivoire. Throughout this readable and engaging study, Lado examines how the relationship between secular powers and religious authorities has determined the direction gender reforms have taken. Although the predominant focus in this text remains on gender reforms in Côte d'Ivoire, Lado also discusses their correlates in Niger, Senegal, and Mali. He shows that the success or failure of gender reforms in West Africa has relied on the interaction of various power relationships that structure the international, national, local, religious, and domestic arenas within which West Africans go about their lives. The book concludes with an informed reflection on the relationship among religions, the state, and gender reforms that highlights some of the issues at stake in the domestication of hegemonic modernity in Africa.
- Stakeholder perspectives on world heritage and development in Africa by Taruvinga, PascallCall Number: DT13 .T37 2023ISBN: 9780367711139Publication Date: 2023Stakeholder Perspectives on World Heritage and Development in Africa argues that World Heritage Sites (WHS) across the African continent should adopt practical, innovative, creative, and alternative management approaches that bring greater socio-economic benefits to society, whilst protecting their Outstanding Universal Value.
- Truth Is a Flightless Bird by Iskanchi Press (Editor, Prepared for Publication by)Call Number: PS3608.U832 T78 2022ISBN: 9781957810034Publication Date: 2022A female immigration officer in Kenya strives to thwart the efforts of an American expatriate pastor with a white savior complex.
- Women and Peacebuilding in Africa by Anna Chitando (Editor)Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781003026044Publication Date: 2020This volume re-centres African women scholars in the discourse on African women and peacebuilding, combining theoretical reflections with case studies in a range of African countries. The chapters outline the history of African women's engagement in peacebuilding, introducing new and neglected themes such as youth, disability, and religious peacebuilding, and laying the foundations for new theoretical insights. Providing case studies from across Africa, the contributors highlights the achievements and challenges characterising women's contributions to peacebuilding on the continent. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of peacebuilding, African security and gender.
- Last Updated: Oct 2, 2024 4:41 PM
- URL: https://guides.library.umass.edu/afroam
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