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Until the advent of African independence, African history was rarely concerned with African lives. Africans were not considered fitting subjects or authoritative sources for historical research, and their words, voices and experiences were largely absent from the continent's history. Following independence, oral history became the tool that historians used to restore African expression to African history. African Words, African Voices shows historians involved with a broad range of oral sources and committed to developing unique methodologies for dealing with historical interpretation. Scholars from North America, Europe, and Africa confront questions such as the relationship between a community's oral and written history, the role of personal histories, the effects of racism and colonialism, the suppression of facts, and how historians should mediate and interpret research data. Focusing on all areas of sub-Saharan Africa, the essays brought together here reflect the extraordinary range of engagement that represents the state of the art of African history writing. African Words, African Voices is a lively and provocative volume that evokes the richness and relevance of oral sources for understanding a complex past for readers at all levels.
Contributors are E. J. Alagoa, David William Cohen, Laura Fair, Babacar Fall, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Isabel Hofmeyr, Abdullahi A. Ibrahim, Corinne A. Kratz, Stephan F. Miescher, Bethwell A. Ogot, Megan Vaughan, Luise White, and Kwesi Yankah.
Luise White teaches African history at the University of Florida. She is author of The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (for which she won the Herskovits Prize) and Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa.
Stephan F. Miescher is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is co-editor (with Lisa Lindsay) of Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa.
David William Cohen is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is author of The Combing of History; Towards a Reconstructed Past; Womunafu's Bunafu; and The Historical Tradition of Busoga, Mukama, and Kintu. He is co-author (with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo) of Burying SM and Siaya.
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