Category: 3rd Year
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Reflections from the African Studies Association (ASA) 2017
I was very excited to attend the African Studies Association (ASA) in Chicago from Nov. 16 – 18 in part because I recently attended the African Studies Association in Africa (ASAA) in Accra in October 2017. I was keen to observe the differences and possible similarities. Right off the bat, the first thing I noticed…
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Shifting Norms of Professionalization in a Nairobi Technology Start-Up Community
I’ve been a bit behind in updating the blog with some observations from the African Studies Association (ASA) conference that I just attended earlier this month (Nov. 16 – 18). I’m working on a separate post on the conference and will upload shortly… But in the time being, I’d like to share the paper that…
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Revised HIST290 Reading [more focused!]
While I have been reading quite broadly (as is quite common I think for the orals literatures development process) and generally following this list (though definitely not as closely as I had hoped!), for purposes of completing this quarter with a tangible output, I’ve decided to narrow in on a particular topic that will enable…
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Refusing to Research: An Alternative Lens on Ethics
Willoughby-Herard (2015) writes about why she decided not to write about and research black South African women (despite attempts by South African archivists to redirect her to write about them). She states: “We do not get to claim space in each other’s histories simply because we want to or because we have been in political…
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Genre: Grant writing
I’ve been deep in grant writing for the past two weeks (a big anthropological fieldwork grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation was due today) so while I have been furiously reading, it’s of a different sort of reading than it would/will be for development of my orals documents. Nonetheless, while part of me detests the genre of…
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Fanon and Du Bois on the “color line”
We ended last week’s joint class with Professor Chandler musing about whether as scholars we should be attempting to move beyond using race as a core categorical/analytical concept, or if we continue to use it while recognizing the potential danger of (further) reifying it as a useful category of significant human (socio/cultural/biological) difference. I’ve got…
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The Nation-State, Pan-Africanism and Biosocial Claims to Knowledge
This past week, I participated in the second biennial conference of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) on “African Studies and Global Politics.” The ASAA seeks to promote the study of Africa from an Africanist perspective, and as such, much of the discourse at the conference was related to pan-Africanism, decolonizing the mind/knowledge, and…
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HIST 290 : Draft Reading List
I’ve compiled a first draft of my reading list for the quarter. I’m copy-pasting it below, but also adding a link to a google doc here so that you can comment on it. Otherwise, for those that are so inclined, feel free to alternatively use hypothesis (which is pretty cool) to annotate the list directly on…
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Update from the classroom
After my first class meetings for HIST 290 and ANTH 289 this week, I am looking forward to the opportunity that I think both classes will allow for – namely to further develop my own lines of research inquiry but with some facilitation, guidance, feedback and support from the faculty and peers in a class…
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Entering Fall 2017
Tomorrow marks the first day of classes (although my classes don’t technically start until next week since my classes are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). I’m really looking forward to this quarter’s classes because I think they will be directly relevant to the direction my project is taking. I’ll be taking: Kris Peterson‘s “Theorizing Africa” (ANTH…
Angela Okune 