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The article presents highlights of a roundtable discussion on the significance of the American Civil War. Topics discussed include emancipation of African American slaves and African diaspora, secession of Southern states that led to the passage of the Homestead Act and Pacific Railway Act, Civil War as a formative event of Reconstruction, freedom and anti-racism in U.S. history, and relevance of the Civil War to capitalism and neoliberalism, as well as to political and agricultural economy.

This essay troubles the romanticized US American "nation of immigrants" narrative through its relationship to Black diasporic histories of migration. The Immigration Act of 1924 codified white ethnocentrism in US American citizenship rights, and thus represented a potential challenge to Black American citizenship claims. Here we reflect on Black American rhetorical practices as a mode of worldmaking; of laying claim to putatively white space and US American citizenship. Through this lens, Black migration and consequent transformation of space functions as a transgressive practice for a people who are perpetually positioned outside of nationality, a way of reclaiming ownership over the spoils of unwilling labor. These Black rhetorical practices echo through the diaspora, as those who built but do not own push back against the ontological negation of ethnonationalist citizenship and immigration policies dictated by white and western imperial powers, in favor of speaking themselves into belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the concept of love presented in a set of songs composed by Brazilian samba singer Dona Ivone Lara about romantic and sexual relationships. Popular music is a pervasive kind of media, reflecting ideas, values, power relations, practices, prejudices and privileges. Black music in the diaspora has been a counter-hegemonic space of knowledge production which provides insight into cultural, social, economic and political matters. To analyze the songs, we created a methodology which intersects themes and categories, reflecting upon the complexity of Black women's experiences depicted in Lara's intellectual production. Adopting an intersectional approach, we concluded that the combined oppressions of gender, race, age and class in Brazil have an important influence in the melancholic aspect of banzo in her songs. The results also show that love, for Lara, is not a fixed or permanent feeling, but a cycle, renewed and reinvented in practice and in constant motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study redirects attention from English-speaking African diaspora stand-up productions to French and German language expressions of purposively selected comedians with recent immigration history from Africa performing within mainland Europe. Through a socio-historical interrogation of specific colonial histories and joke themes, the paper comparatively explores the French language stage acts of Fary Lopez, Samia Orosemane (France) and Cécile Djunga (Belgium and France) and the German language works of Dave Davis (Germany), Charles Nguela (Switzerland), and Soso Mugiraneza (Austria). The aim is to show how the individuated colonial histories of the nations in which these comics reside and the chronicles of their relations with Africa(ns) and Black peoples feature in joke formulations and satiric jibes of the jokesters. Through these explorations, this essay studies how stand-up comedy's transformative power challenges societal norms and attitudes using the backdrop of the concurrently heterogeneous and dissimilar colonial histories of the African continent and its diasporas. Moreover, through its focus on non-English expressions, it presents the unique intersections of language, "race," ethnicity and colonial histories, as well as the geographic and linguistic spread of the African diaspora beyond European nations with direct colonial contact with the continent. Thus, the enquiry posits joke performances as platforms for cultural expression and critique as well as a site within which African peoples negotiate their presence in non-African environments. Plain language summary: Examination of African diaspora stand-up comedy in German and French The study explores African diaspora stand-up comedy performances outside the English-speaking areas of the West. It studies the acts of six comedians of African origin performing in Western Europe, with a view to showing how the co-opt the histories of marginalization and discrimination against Black peoples in commenting on present-day racializations going on in the world today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rice is a keystone crop of the peasant farming system of Maranhão, Brazil. Its origins can be traced to the food fields of fugitive slave communities that proliferated throughout the Amazonic frontier during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Maranhão was the setting for a rice plantation economy, which knowingly exploited enslaved West African rice growers. Plantation runaways carried rice to maroon (quilombo) communities where the esteemed dietary staple was planted. Oral histories commemorate the role of enslaved African and Afrodescendant women in quilombo rice transfers and the subsistence practices that shaped the rice-based peasant farming systems of the African Diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This manuscript analyzes the development of African studies in Brazil in the context of the implementation of Law 10.639/03, enacted in January 2003, which constituted an important step for teaching about Africa and the African diaspora in schools. We will present information that helps to understand key characteristics of Brazilian society, using data provided by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, with a focus on the functioning of the Brazilian educational system. In this context, it is important to highlight the role of public measures implemented in the 2000s that facilitated a more democratic education and addressed racial and social inequalities. Central to this agenda is the understanding of the implementation of Law 10.639/03, which mandated the teaching of African history and Afro-Brazilian peoples’ history throughout the country’s basic education system. The impact of this law was extensive and also affected higher education, which had to adapt to train professionals capable of implementing this mandate. However, as we argue, it is not possible to understand Law 10.639/03 in isolation; it must be studied in conjunction with other public policies, considering the Brazilian educational system and the societal interest in learning more about African history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Originating from a Greek goddess called Demokratia, democracy constitutes a coup de 'tat against African spirituality and against Afrocentric politics. Subjected not only to the Greek goddess Demokratia but also to algocracy, corporatocracy, and technocracy, African politics has long ceased to be Afrocentric in the sense of serving the material interests of African people. Drawing on the Shona (a people of Zimbabwe) term vanhu (humans) to coin the word vanhucracy, and drawing on intensive literature review, this study argues that Western democracy is in fact colonial in the sense of it bypassing African material interests and in its privileging of liberal rights. In this regard, the study also frames the argument in terms of what it calls the coloniality of democracy which speaks to how Demokratia disrupts Afrocentric politics. Plain Language Summary: How democracy and intelligent technology are connected to colonialism: the value of vanhucracy in Afrocentric governance The study critiques Western democracy and it argues for reliance on the African notion of vanhucracy which is derived from vanhu (humans) in Shona culture (a people of Zimbabwe). The paper argues that the West dominates politics in Africa and so it disrupts Afrocentric governance which places African values at the center. While the paper draws insights from Shona word vanhu, it also argues that this word would find resonance across the entire continent of Africa and in the African diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although situated at the geographic margin of the early modern Atlantic World, the Pacific coast of Peru was an important region in the development of African diasporic material culture. Adopting an interdisciplinary material historical approach, we present the first systematic discussion of the known Afro-Atlantic-style tobacco pipes to be archaeologically recovered in Peru. Eighteen Afro-Atlantic-style tobacco pipes or pipe sherds dating to Peru's Spanish colonial period have been identified across sites in the coastal cities of Lima and Trujillo and from a vineyard hacienda in rural Nasca. Tobacco pipes are among the most recognized and debated forms of early modern Atlantic African and diasporic expressions of material culture, as such, they present a powerful entry point to understanding the aesthetic consequences of colonial projects and diverse articulations across the Atlantic World. The material history of Afro-Atlantic smoking culture exemplifies how aesthetics moved between localities and developed diasporic entanglements. In addition to the formal analysis and visual description of the pipes, we examine historical documentation and the work of nineteenth-century Afro-Peruvian watercolorist Francisco (Pancho) Fierro to better understand the aesthetics of Afro-Andean smoking culture in Spanish colonial and early Republican Peru. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the multidimensional facets of food, migration, and individuals’ sense of otherness and dis/connection to place as represented in selected fictional works from Nigeria. The article pays attention in particular to Chika Unigwe’s short story collection, Better Never than Late (2019), which explores the experiences of a group of Nigerian migrants and Europeans living in Belgium through connected stories. Drawing on the theoretical insights of postcolonialism, negofeminism, and affect theory, we explore the connectedness of African migrant personae and their sensitiveness to food and place in the fictive universe of this short story collection. We disentangle the manner in which food and the occasions of meals creatively catalyze different forms of migrant and diasporic consciousness and embodied experiences, including gender consciousness, personhood, and sociocultural angst. The article traces the representation of food in different but connected narratives of estrangement within the African diaspora. The representation of food in fictional works allows for reflection on the psychosocial and existential realities of Africans in a fluid late modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over five years, Chrissy has developed and facilitated “Morals + Murals Hood Tours” of North and West Philadelphia that revere Black and local counter-narratives. In her presence, I was entrusted with such stories that I otherwise could not access. Since then, 2021, I have returned to Philadelphia (Philly) and taken Black-led tours in other locations. While in New Orleans, I learned from Mama Vera. In my hometown, Detroit, I finally met Baba Jamon Jordan during the Black Scroll Network History and Tour. Most recently, I took a solo trip to Portugal, where I learned from Naky during the African Lisbon Tour. My experiences with Chrissy, Mama Vera, Baba Jamon, and Naky, inspire me to question: How do Black storytellers honor, imagine, and amplify Black curricula, revelatory counter-narratives, and possibilities via curated city-based “street” tours? In doing so, how do they participate in glocal (simultaneously local and global) conversations that speak back to anti-Blackness. These wonderings frame my conceptualizing of curbside pedagogy (CP). Through witnessing, I have noticed these elements of CP: • Hearing One’s Own Voice • Summoning Responsibility & Resistance • Grief and Healing • Volume (Space-Making and Space-Taking) • Ujamaa • Decolonial Cartographies • Glocal Black Curricula Hearing One’s Own VoiceSummoning Responsibility & ResistanceGrief and HealingVolume (Space-Making and Space-Taking)UjamaaDecolonial CartographiesGlocal Black Curricula [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the life of Gabriel, an Ethiopian Jew who faced persecution and oppression in the 16th century. Gabriel was kidnapped and enslaved in the Arab world before converting to Islam and later Christianity. He found himself in front of the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa, where he faced multiple interrogations and sentencing. Gabriel's experiences shed light on the practices of enslavement in the Horn of Africa and the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean World. His story highlights the challenges faced by non-elite individuals during this time period. [Extracted from the article]

In 1877, the African American musical ensemble known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled to Germany to raise money for their university. The choir's ten-month tour provided German listeners with one of their first significant and sustained encounters with African Americans and African American culture in the nineteenth century. As listeners throughout Germany heard the ensemble perform, they began to debate the Fisk Jubilee Singer's musical, cultural, and ethnic origins. At the heart of their growing ethnomusicological and anthropological interest in the Jubilee Singer's music was the question of whether or not African Americans were fulfilling the powerful promise of the civilizing mission: Were they proof that people of the black diaspora were capable of accepting "Western" art music and cultural values? This article illustrates how African American music contributed to global conversations on the civilizing mission in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States has been a space for global musical transnational encounters among African-descended peoples, with various artists collaborating. These collaborations have blossomed with the advent of Afrobeats—a loose term describing the contemporary transatlantic sound of popular African music. Although there are male and female Afrobeats performers on the African continent, this cultural exchange occurs more often between male artists and U.S. musicians. Because male artists are mostly invited for live performances, their visibility puts them in a position to perform with and collaborate with U.S. artists. As a result, male artists get nominations for global awards such as the Grammys and accumulate more wealth. For female artists, the result is less visibility and wealth. Using Tiwa Savage and Burna Boy—two Afrobeats giants—as case studies, this essay examines the factors that limit Tiwa, a female performer, from achieving the same wealth as her male counterpart, Burna Boy. Specifically, this study analyzes the sonic and semiotic representations in their popular music videos, Tiwa's "Koroba" and Burna Boy's "On the Low," to understand why Burna Boy might have the edge over Tiwa. Their music and career trajectories shed light on how capitalism and sociopolitical issues, including colorism, might contribute to the gender wealth disparities between male and female Afrobeats performers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies of translations of audio-visual productions that explore African American issues focus exclusively on African American Vernacular English and culturally specific references, the standardisation or omission of which are seen to compromise the originals' critique of race and their value for in-group identity. This article takes a multimodal approach to three such productions dubbed for a Spanish audience. Firstly, it examines how characters' African American identity is rendered not only by language but also visually and aurally. Comprehension in dubbed versions is more likely to be affected by non-linguistic matters, such as casting of voice talent. Secondly, it is shown how translations shape the audio-visual creation of a fictional world and extra-diegetic elements that address a particular audience and thus enable in-group identification along ethnic lines. Lastly, an alternative translation strategy is outlined that targets audiences from the international Black diaspora to whom such productions might appeal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media representations of African underdevelopment are central to the communicative potential and reach of international development in the mainstream public sphere, but they are not without sustained critique and confrontation. By conceptualising the humanitarian-themed campaign – #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou on Twitter, as an Afrodiasporic Subaltern Counterpublic, this article considers how UK African diasporic communities have utilised this digitalised environment to oppose the popular but problematic 'face of development'. Applying Nancy Fraser's counterpublics theorisation and drawing on social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, it shows how oppositional counter-discourses among these online diasporic communities challenge problematic African representation within 'white media'. This is realised in three distinct but interrelated discursive practices: (1) Afrodiasporic solidaristic orientations; (2) Diasporic solidarism as an assemblage(d) response to development's institutionalised whiteness; and (3) Countering Africa(n) misrepresentations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study investigated the relationship between beauty standards and identity in the United States from the perspective of 20 self-identified millennial Black women. During semi-structured virtual interviews, participants defined Black, American, and millennial beauty standards distinctly. American beauty was associated with Eurocentrism and mainstream media representation. Interpretations of a millennial beauty standard were aligned with perceptions of the generation as tolerant and politically conscious. Black American beauty standards embraced the range of hair textures and skin tones present in the African diaspora. While participants were cognizant of the different beauty ideals present, their interaction with beauty standards was ambivalent. Interviewees found beauty knowledge accessible through social media. However, they remain confined to a restrictive beauty standard due to workplace expectations around professionalism. Participants negotiated where and when to express their intracultural beauty ideals but participated in the beauty industry through processes of learning how to care for their hair in its natural state. Even though they have autonomy and flexibility in expressing their cultural styles, personal and professional repercussions are still plausible. Future studies can expand on these findings by exploring perceptions of American beauty standards from a different generation, region, or identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black environmental geographies scholarship has made significant strides in expanding the ways we understand ecologies and ecological relationships interweaving the lives of black communities across the black diaspora. In this article, I review the analytical interventions in this field that press the bounds of traditional environmental injustice framings of black ecological experiences and relations. Drawing on black studies, this literature, first, helps us to position present racial ecological landscapes within historical and long-standing logics of race, colonialism, and imperialism. Moreover, it breathes nuance and life into discourse that overrepresents black ecological relationships as lack, decay, and containers of pollution and death, with very little everyday living. Building on these interventions and understanding the dialectic relationship between death-dealing and life-affirming socio-ecological processes at work in black environmental geographies, I call attention to interdisciplinary methodological approaches that bring together black environmental geographies and critical environmental science to behold the complex enmeshment of social and biophysical relations and the entanglement of life and degradation that interweave the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timelines are well known temporal organizers in various types of African diasporic groove-based musics. But what happens when they are deliberately cut, rotated, or staggered? This article explores some compositional techniques used by Orkestra Rumpilezz, a big band from Bahia, Brazil, that combines jazz with Afro-Bahian carnival and sacred music and that bases its compositions on traditional and modified timelines. The paper offers metric interpretations of the orchestra’s timeline experimentations and relates them to their stated goal to “dignify and demonstrate the high level of rhythmic complexity of Afro-Bahian music.” The main demonstration is that the composer’s experimentations with timelines are a technique to increase rhythmic complexity and to elevate the status of Afro-Bahian music. Additionally, I propose a way to expand existing timeline models to account for more subtle and implicit relationships of timeline alignment found in Brazil. The main goal is to discover how the orchestra’s claimed rhythmic complexity is expressed through arrangement. This is achieved by combining music theory, analysis, and ethnographic work in Bahia.

The increasing presence of African diasporic people in Europe and their identity politics have given rise to a proliferation of studies on their experiences, albeit with the exception of central eastern Europe (CEE). This research expands on this scholarship by addressing lived experiences, racialisation processes and struggles to belong among Afropeans in Czechia. Grounded in ethnography the study draws from narrative interviews with self-identified Afroczechs who are closely connected to both their African heritage and their Czechness. We conceptualise their identity politics as Restricted Affiliation in a sense that the state of belonging to Czechia has distinct limits due to the high costs of racial Otherness they experience. The findings demonstrate the limits of a shared language vis-à-vis racial ideologies in Czech national identity constructions and contribute to more visibility and further theorising of Czech blackness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex autoimmune condition that disproportionately impacts non-White ethnic and racial groups, particularly individuals in the African diaspora who experience heightened incidence, prevalence, and adverse outcomes. Genetic and epigenetic factors play significant roles in SLE risk, however these factors neither explain the whole of SLE risk nor the stark racial disparities we observe. Moreover, our understanding of genetic risk factors within African ancestry populations is limited due to social and environmental influences on research participation, disease presentation, and healthcare access. Globally, the African diaspora faces barriers in accessing essential SLE diagnostic tools, therapeutics, healthcare practitioners, and high-quality clinical and translational research studies. Here, we provide insights into the current state of genetic studies within African ancestry populations and highlight the unique challenges encountered in SLE care and research across countries of varying income levels. We also identify opportunities to address these disparities and promote scientific equity for individuals affected by SLE within the global African diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black girlhood media studies provides a space to connect multidisciplinary research across the fields of African American and African Diaspora studies, media studies, gender studies, and communications. With a focus on film, television, and digital media, this essay highlights common themes and approaches of existing scholarship on Black girlhood in media to further understand and contemplate Black girlhood as a media genre. Key themes in prior literature include: adultification and lack of innocence, stereotypes, racial politics, digital media artifacts, and audience perceptions. The essay concludes with suggestions for ways scholars, producers, and consumers can further engage collective cultural representations and varied contexts to build a robust field of Black girlhood media studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international AfroBiotech conference series, launched in 2019 in Atlanta, GA, USA, is an emerging platform to foster innovation, promote inclusivity, and highlight the contributions of Black scientists in the biotechnology sector. Led by scientists and engineers from the African Diaspora community, these conferences serve as a vital forum for networking, sharing groundbreaking research, and addressing health disparities, thereby advancing both scientific excellence and social equity in biotech. This review discusses the mission and impact of AfroBiotech and highlights similar conferences, particularly in regard to addressing the legacy of disparities in science and engineering in the US. An in-depth overview of AfroBiotech attendees, over 100 per year, from diverse sectors including academia, industry, and government is provided. This review also highlights the research presented at AfroBiotech by scientists in regenerative engineering, medical biotechnology, genomics and genetics, computational and systems biology, nanotechnology and biochemistry, and immunological and microbiome engineering. Activities to support an inclusive workforce are also discussed. Through fostering an inclusive environment, AfroBiotech is on a trajectory to inspire a new generation of scientists and pave the way for a diverse and equitable biotechnological future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Afrofuturism (an artistic perspective in which Black voices tell alternative narratives of culture, technology, and the future) and the Dark Fantastic (interrupting negative depictions of Black people through emancipatory interpretations of art) are two interrelated concepts used by Black artists in the Atlantic World to counter negative images and emphasize a story from a Black perspective. Likewise, these concepts have been used to recreate and re-narrate history with an eye towards subverting white supremacist historical narratives. By using Afrofuturism and the Dark Fantastic as lenses through which texts by authors from the African Diaspora in the Atlantic World are examined, an alternative narrative of Black histories and futures concerned with revolution, liberation, and justice can be seen. The two texts that are the subject of this research include José Antonio Aponte's descriptions of his book of paintings under interrogation in 1812–1813, and Martin Delany's novel Blake; or the Huts of America (1859–1862), providing images of enslavement that run counter to a white supremacist telling of history. They both imagine alternative pasts and futures for Africa and the Afro-Diaspora involving revolution and magic. These works, though produced at different times and locations in the nineteenth century, offer new ways in which to discuss liberation and freedom in the context of the artistic production of the Atlantic World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lacewing genus Afroptera Abdalla & Mansell (Neuroptera: Nemopteridae: Nemopterinae) is endemic to southern Africa, predominantly found in the Fynbos and Succulent Karoo biomes. The taxonomy of the genus has been recently resolved. However, the monophyly and evolutionary history of the genus has never been addressed. This study employs an integrative phylogenetic approach, by incorporating three ribosomal genes (16S, 28S and 18S) and two protein‐coding genes (cytochrome oxidase subunit I and carbamoyl‐phosphate synthetase‐aspartate transcarbamoylase‐dihydroorotase), and morphological data to examine the monophyly and historical biogeography of Afroptera. We use Bayesian, parsimony and maximum likelihood phylogenetic methods to assess the monophyly and relatedness of Afroptera within the Nemopterinae. We also use ancestral range reconstruction and diversification analysis to infer the historical biogeography of the genus. Our analyses reveal the genus as a monophyletic lineage. The genus Afroptera originated during the Pliocene (5.24–3.13 Mya) in a desert environment, experiencing rapid speciation during the Pleistocene, primarily within the Fynbos and Succulent biomes; and secondarily dispersed into the Nama Karoo and Savannah (Kalahari) biomes. The current distribution patterns of Afroptera species likely stem from intensified aridification in the southwest during the Plio‐Pleistocene, consistent with the dry‐adapted nature of Afroptera's ancestors. Therefore, our findings suggest a climatically driven diversification model for the genus Afroptera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unfolds in three parts. In Part 1, I describe how I have contended with the fraught relationships among mapping, nationalism, and colonialism in my teaching and research. When writing my first book, Contesting Race and Citizenship, I had to reckon with the positivist impulse to enumerate and map Black Italianness—and, more broadly, with the politics of visibility at a time of increasingly virulent racial nationalisms, xenophobia, and outright anti‐Black violence. In Part 2, I describe the ways my own thinking about mapping has been pushed in new directions by insights from Black geographies. Drawing on Clyde Woods, Katherine McKittrick, and Édouard Glissant—as well as essays from the edited volume The Black Geographic—I argue that Black geographic counter‐cartographies foreground insurgent Black spatial knowledges and practices that have always exceeded racial‐spatial violence, and approach mapping as both a material and poetic process. In Part 3, I conclude by advancing some tentative ideas about what it might mean to map new or alternative geographies of abolitionist struggle that attend to the interconnections between Black Atlantic and Black Mediterranean histories of racial capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how male Ghanaian migrant players utilise Give-back behaviours to demonstrate their connectedness and sense of belonging to their communities. The literature provides theoretical insights for understanding player behaviour from the perspectives of personal values, objectives, conceptions, or economic interests, all of which can define a person’s cultural identity. Players’ actions may either determine a return on investment to their families, relatives and the community or strengthen the relationship with their local communities. Qualitative interviews with 20 former and current professional Ghanaian players contribute to explaining how their economic and non-economic investments in their communities are influenced by cultural identity. Findings reveal that Ghanaian players’ give-back behaviours are not only based on social norms and cultural values but also cement their cultural affiliation in the communities. The study can provide valuable information for African governments to congeal the African diaspora’s shared identity and history via socioeconomic investments to promote local and national development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: African countries are among the most vulnerable and affected by climate change. Comprehending climate change poses a major hurdle for the African population, politicians, and the African Union alike, presenting a substantial challenge for all involved. It is generally accepted that universities and other higher education institutions must play a leading role as drivers of change. Therefore, it is very important that African universities educate students about both mitigation and adaptation measures, develop the necessary initiatives to foster research in climate change-related topics and promote cooperation and alliances with key stakeholders. Results: This research reports on a study aimed at identifying the extent to which higher education institutions in Africa are engaging in efforts to deal with the challenges posed by climate change. The objectives were accomplished through a mixed method approach, incorporating a review of literature, an international survey, and the inclusion of selected case studies from African universities that have developed successful initiatives. The research has brought to light significant disparities, such as varying perceptions regarding the potential outcomes of climate change and its associated extreme events in African countries. In addition, the study highlighted areas where there is a notable consensus on specific issues. It also offers a comprehensive view of the different strategies that universities are implementing to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation in several areas. Although there is a growing interest in the need to contribute to the joint task of mitigating the effects of climate change and adapting to its consequences, HEIs need to increase their efforts to enhance the work of their professors and researchers. To this end, the involvement of public authorities and other private sector actors is essential. Conclusions: This article outlines some actions that need to be undertaken so that universities may play a more active role in global efforts to handle the problems associated with a changing climate. There is a notable focus from academic actors on addressing climate change challenges in Africa. In addition, there is a proactive emphasis on utilizing science and research to comprehend climate change issues and offer widely applicable tools for adaptation and mitigation to safeguard both people and the environment. Consequently, it is crucial and time-sensitive for African universities to enhance their expertise in the field of climate change, fostering the capacity to conduct innovative research that addresses the various challenges linked to the evolving climate. This study offers several useful lessons for African universities to replicate experiences that have generated results in different countries and contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When scholars have compared "African traditional religion" and "Western science," they have often treated the terms of this comparison as racialized unitary entities, which are either radically different or somewhat similar (even as Western categories of rationality or nature remain the basis for these comparisons). This essay unsettles these assumptions by focusing on practices that are called "science" in the fields of both petroleum geology and Afro-Caribbean religion. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Trinidad, arguably the world's oldest site of commercial oil extraction, I show how internal differences between those involved in "petroleum science" and "African religion" reveal a spectrum of meanings for the word "science" centered on relations to risk. At one end of this spectrum, science conveyed ideals of stable tradition that de-risked claims to knowledge for energy sector specialists intent on securing foreign investment or for "Yorubacentric" lineages of African religion centering initiation-based authority. At this spectrum's other end, "science" foregrounded the risks of accessing hard-to-perceive forces in petroleum exploration or "spiritual work." By focusing on heterogeneous practices rather than cultural essences or ideals of rationality, I show how the ethical implications of "science" depend on differing experiences of the risks of working with subterranean powers. While petroleum surveys at my field site in Trinidad required embodied risks by laborers, geologists backgrounded these contexts of power, representing the risks of their work as a problem of scientific accuracy. Afro-Trinidadian spiritual workers, in contrast, foregrounded the embodied risks of science as the ground of ethical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the unique capacity of Afrobeats music to offer the gift of critique by way of friction within the African diaspora. Topics include scholar Keguro Macharia's description of friction as the tension between Black aspirations or ideals, within Black communities and during diasporic encounters, a discussion of Afrobeats' vital features such as possibility and critique, and the success of Afrobeats as a Black African gift to the world.

In this article we draw on storytelling and bricolage to reflect on critical accompaniment as relational praxis with cultural workers from the African diaspora inside/outside/in‐between the university‐community nexus in Australia. We write together weaving our voices as we re‐member our journey and our coming together fuelled by our shared desire, to tell our own stories on our terms; to contest virulent racisms and misrecognition of the African diaspora in media, academic, and political discourse; and to create spaces, settings, and narratives for identity, community and belonging. In reflecting on this journey we distil some insights on our efforts to enact just methods, our routes and roots of creating praxis inside/outside and with the university. We suggest that our relationships, forged through critical dialogue and examination of racism in settings that we intentionally create, is central to developing communality. Drawing from the rich history of African and diasporic archives, we also advocate for expanding ecologies of knowledge and practice and modalities for endarkened counter storytelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political turmoil between the 1950s and the 1970s that stemmed from the liberation movements in Africa, and in the Caribbean Islands, in which African/ black diaspora is so common, triggered many writers of the time to visit colonial literature in order to be able to find a meaning for the liberation struggles of the blacks. Similarly, Aimé Césaire, a Francophone literary and political figure, revisited Shakespeare’s The Tempest (around 1611), and adapted it into A Tempest (Une Tempête,1969). A Tempest is a play in which Shakespearean Prospero’s strong and univocal status is replaced by strong and rebellious Caliban, who subverts all the colonial discourses that marginalise and dehumanise the blacks. In the light of these discussions, this paper aims to discuss that in A Tempest, Caliban becomes an instrument for Césaire in order to demarginalise the blacks contrary to Prospero’s dehumanising methods applied through racial speciesism. By means of Caliban’s “explod[ing] Prospero’s old myth”, Césaire wants to prove that blacks are humans, too, with a glorious history and identity to be proud of. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By way of autoethnographic poetry, I reflect on my personal struggles related to racial consciousness as I embarked on a journey—from America, across the Atlantic, and eventually, to the Indian Ocean off the East Coast of (mother) Africa. The story of my apparent racial crisis is viewed through multiple lenses, as I infuse the pivotal readings of The Black Atlantic, Lose Your Mother, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, and personal experiences both in autoethnographic and in poetic form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subjectivity of Black individuals and communities as content producers in Sino–African/Black encounters has been underestimated in popular culture and academic discussion. By incorporating the theory of the libidinal economy, this study aims to understand the unique discursive practices in video blogs (vlogs) produced by Black YouTubers in China from the perspective of Black cyberculture. This study applies critical technocultural discourse analysis to 100 popular videos. Two levels of libidinal investments are identified: first, the libidinal energy, Black pathos, invested by Black Youtubers as the subject of video production and publication; and second, the interracial libidinal tension invested by Chinese and Black subjects, which is externalized as racialization. Two types of libidinal flows are identified: the libidinal energy flow, through various technologies, from offline encounters in China to the global video platform YouTube, supported by the discursive practices, such as signifyin'; and the libidinal flow from the narrative of mundanity to a wider domain of discursive contestation between China and the United States This study also suggests to focus on the variation of libidos, filtered by identities, invested in materiality in a cross-cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonialism established a system of racial oppression, both mentally and physically, by impeding pre-colonial African education, which was originally intended to reflect the realities of pre-colonial African societies. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, this paper argues that before the colonial administration, Africans were already developed people with different educations for different age groups, making them functional and inclusive within the larger political sphere. Decolonisation only reflects a shift in political power and the withdrawal of colonialists from African territories, but it has not resulted in any fundamental shift in the mentality of political leaders and nation-building in the decolonised nations. Through the adoption of game theory, this paper argues that the education curriculum left behind by colonial governments was designed to make African nations economically and technologically dependent on developed nations. Such a pattern of education was not geared toward African technological development, but rather conditioned African nations to be consumers rather than producers, with the resulting loss of initiative among the Africans. The curriculum is insidious in terms of principles and implementation across all levels of educational institutions, slowly destroying the economies of African nations that were once ahead of European nations during the pre-colonial epoch. Game theory was adopted for the understanding of the complex dynamics of decolonisation and downshift in knowledge reproduction in Africa. Instead of accelerating the socioeconomic development of decolonised African nations, the curriculum based on Western principles and ideas further subjugates African economies to imperialist influence and hegemony through the instrumentality of international financial institutions, which frequently dictate exploitative asymmetric relationships between the developed and developing African nations. African nations must therefore look inward for an African-oriented and culturally appropriate educational curriculum to meet the demand for socioeconomic advancement and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pasado y Memoria. Revista de Historia Contemporánea is the property of Pasado y Memoria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, I share ways in which my professional journey, from admissions and enrollment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, intersect with my evolution as a scholar-practitioner through CANDEL, the doctorate in educational leadership program at the University of California Davis. I further share how I have leveraged my experience in the EdD program as a scholar-practitioner to challenge systems of higher education through storytelling and counter narratives as a means to reroute narratives that institutions create around the experiences of marginalized communities, including the African diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Methods Results Conclusion Black people had the highest prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) of any racial/ethnic group in the United States (US) as of 2020. As racial disparities in the prevalence of ADRD are being investigated, more evidence is necessary to determine the pathways and mechanisms that either slow ADRD progression or improve quality of life for those affected. Religion/spirituality (R/S) has been shown to affect health outcomes but has rarely been studied as a possible pathway for reducing ADRD risk. Crucially, Black people also report higher levels of R/S than other racial/ethnic groups in the United States. This research asks if R/S affects ADRD risk among Black adults and if any effects persist after controlling for hypertension.We conducted a secondary data analysis drawing from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative longitudinal dataset with an oversampling of Black adults.We used logistic regression analysis to demonstrate how R/S has an ameliorating impact on ADRD risk among Black people, even after controlling for hypertension. Those who never attended religious services had 2.37 higher odds of being diagnosed with ADRD than those who attended more than once a week. Further, as R/S attendance increased, ADRD risk decreased linearly.These findings demonstrate the importance that existing cultural networks (e.g., R/S) can have for reducing ADRD burden for Black people and has important implications for the role of R/S in shaping ADRD symptomatology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how the novel Soul Tourists (2005) by the British writer Bernardine Evaristo and the series Project Diaspora: a Journey through Time (2014) by the Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop critically intervene in and contribute to ongoing conversations about how ‘Europe’ is conceptualized. By adapting historical narratives and by playing with genre conventions, Evaristo and Diop shed light on historical perspectives and interpretations of Europe that have remained obscured. Most important with regard to the European public sphere, Soul Tourists and Project Diaspora adapt the category of ‘European heritage’. Artistically re-narrating the stories of Black people in Europe, Evaristo and Diop establish geographical and historical dialogues between Europe, Africa and the African Diaspora that re-write European heritage and that deconstruct the prevailing narrative of Europe as White. While their works could be said to ‘Africanize’ the categories of ‘European heritage’ and ‘Europe’, ‘Afro(euro)pean heritage’ and ‘Afroeurope’ are not the end-goal. Rather, by adapting categories that many Europeans continue to conceive as universals, Evaristo and Diop reveal received understandings of these categories as racialized particulars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fall of 1810, two young Acadian women exhibited signs interpreted by their predominantly Catholic community as a possession or enchantment by threatening spiritual forces. Family and neighbours banded together and performed unorthodox rituals that offer historians of religion and of Acadia the opportunity to analyze several Atlantic influences on this rural parish. It is an intriguing case in the religious and social history of Nova Scotia that demonstrates multiple cultural aspects in convergence. The Acadian community's history and its location on a colonial fringe connected its members with diverse ritual knowledges. This article argues that the nature of the girls' symptoms and the methods that the Acadian community used to bring healing reached beyond lay Roman Catholicism. The Acadians were influenced by New Light evangelical theology and baptismal spirituality from New England, as well as African diaspora spiritual elements from a nearby Black Loyalist settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the role African women played at the end of the nineteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula. This paper describes the reconstruction of the first studied late modern African diaspora, settled in Catalonia in the 1880s, with its precedent, the very rich Fernandino woman of Spanish Guinea, Amelia Barleycorn. Historical reconstruction shows that this elite was highly visible with the Catalan bourgeoisie in the first half of the twentieth century in Barcelona, later resulting in having complete anonymity at the end of the century. This was evidenced by the neglect observed in the racist attack suffered by the descendant of two illustrious Fernandino families in 1992. The article reviews how the Fernandino community broke colonial moulds, as well as putting strain on the Iberian seams of race, class and sex from the end of the nineteenth century, and reflects on the Catalan and Spanish state promoted amnesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fans are major stakeholders in the football industry as they are a major component of memberships for clubs as well as followers of individual players as well as national teams. They are the ones who attract sponsorships, and money flows in the game through and because of them. However, African football has a unique challenge as the fans seem to be conflicted in wanting to support their own African football teams at club and national level while at the same time being drawn to European football as their star players are playing abroad and because of the historical legacy of colonialism that introduced the game to the African fans. This paper draws on different perspectives to discuss the conflicted nature of African fans and why European football and national teams seem to dwarf local club football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to map the research landscape of reverse logistics in e-commerce from 2003 to 2023. This comprehensive bibliometric analysis employs VOSViewer and R as essential methodological tools and searches into the evolving landscape of reverse logistics in the e-commerce era. The study uses the Scopus database to gather and thoroughly analyze 1073 documents from 2003 to 2023. With a specific aim to bridge existing gaps in the literature, the research not only identifies prolific authors, productive countries, and top frequent keywords but also utilizes publication and citation trends to highlight periods of growth and stability. Notably, the absence of African contributions prompts critical reflections on global research inclusivity. By providing a unified perspective on reverse logistics in e-commerce, this research enhances academic understanding and offers practical insights for supply chain management. Using VOSViewer and R adds methodological rigor and depth to the study's findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay concerns the descriptions of exhaustion connected to the suicidal thoughts and actions of Anyanwu, the protagonist of Octavia E. Butler's novel Wild Seed (1980). Expanding the disability studies concept of desirelessness to graze Black diaspora studies, this essay resists the total absorption of enslaved Black women's suicidal thoughts and actions into the collective political motivations of the living, even as it resists their banishment. Rather than speak authoritatively about an action ultimately undertaken alone, the essay feels for the ordinary edges of the limits of "diaspora" to consider more carefully those who are lost to the collective, those who turn away from it, and those for whom suicide cannot be categorized comfortably as only resistance or defeat. Or, plainly stated: Without purpose and without pity, we can still love you. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of reconstructing nationhood and national identity in terms of culture, religion, language, politics, etc. has become one of the greatest challenges faced by the colonized countries after their achieving political freedom. In his novels, Ngũgĩ wa Thiang'o criticizes the presence of "imperial tradition" in African countries, fostered by the local neocolonial bourgeois, as it is detrimental to the reconstruction of national identity and culture. His novels draw the readers' attention to the "resistance tradition" in the post-independent colonized nations, focused on reconstructing their national identity; however, the continuing imperial tradition makes the struggle a perennial one. This paper explores the elements of constraints in the process of reconstruction activities attempted by African natives to establish nationhood and national identity from cultural debris, with reference to selected works of Ngũgĩ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, I examine race, indigeneity, and sovereignty in order to understand the relationship between them as they structure the lives of Black people on the continent of Africa and in the African diaspora. Specifically, I am interested in Black Indigeneities and explore the following questions: What are Black Indigeneities, beyond the connections between African-descended and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, especially the U.S.? Indigeneity implies ties to land and heritage, but what does it look like when those ties have been weakened or severed? What does it look like for places and people living with the consequences of different but related histories of settler and indirect colonization and chattel slavery on both sides of the Atlantic? Rather than trying to arrive at definitive responses, I use these questions as a point of departure for outlining an analytical framework that identifies sovereignty as a crucial element in understanding the diversity of Black Indigenous histories and experience under different but related structures of power. I distinguish between indigeneities of remembering and indigeneities of recovery. I also seek to go beyond the concept of arrivantcy as a framework for understanding the indigeneities of African-descended peoples in the Americas.

Abstract: Drawing on interviews and archival and published materials, Gyamfi reinterprets Anani Dzidzienyo’s significance as a Black Studies scholar and activist. Dzidzienyo was a pioneer in academic African diaspora studies who institutionalized the inclusion of Africa and Brazil. For fifty years, Dzidzienyo created Black Studies and Afro-Latin American programs, designed Afro-Brazilian courses that expanded Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, and supported freedom struggles in Africa and Brazil. In so doing, he built a transnational network of scholar-activists and institutions. Yet, for all this, scholars have mostly neglected Dzidzienyo’s work and wide influence on multiple fields of study and liberation movements.