International Research Council on African Literature and Culture (IRCALC)

Council for Scholars, Writers and Research

africaresearch.org/ircalc.htm

Description:

IRCALC is the web based council of writers, scholars and researchers around the world with common interest in African studies, particularly the literature, arts and cultures of Africa and her Diaspora. IRCALC editors also see to the regular volumes of the journals of Critical Studies (CS), African Literature (JAL) and New Poetry (NP).

For years IRCALC initiatives in research in African literature with member organizations, college departments, libraries and individuals across the Diaspora have provided information, ideas, and research that enrich understanding of Africa's rich and diverse cultural heritage. Membership cuts across race and nationality and embraces scholars committed to a more imaginative approach to Africa's development issues. CS, JAL and NP journal publications are available online or by subscription. Individual and institutional members also receive regular reviews and newsletters of the organisation.

Irele, F. Abiola and Gikandi Simon, eds. The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

This history offers new perspectives on African and Caribbean literature. Chapters address the literature itself, in a variety of languages, regions and genres, the practices and conditions of its composition, and its complex relationship with African social and geopolitical history. The book provides an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise the field of African literature, defined both by imaginative expression in African itself and the black diaspora. This magisterial history of African literature is an essential resource for specialists and students.

[Cambridge University Press].

Irele, F. Abiola. The African Imagination: Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001.

This collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an "African imagination" manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora. The African Imagination includes Irele's probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampaté Bâ, and Ahmadou Kourouma, among others, as well as examinations of the growing presence of African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West. Taken as a whole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters.

[Source: Amazon.com].

Samson Itodo

Executive Director, Yiaga Africa

Sector:

NGO

Location:

Nigeria

Contact:

Website: thesamsonitodo.com

JENdA Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies

Peer-Reviewed Journal

jendajournal.com

Jack, Andrew and Adam Green. "African Business Leaders Find New Ways to Give Back." FT.Com (Nov 15, 2017).

This article highlights the philanthropic works of some of Africa's business leaders in diverse areas of life including education, technology, nutrition, health and disaster response. Business leaders whose charitable works are highlighted in the article include Jim Ovia and Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, Strive and Tsitsi Masiyiwa of Zimbabwe, Patrice and Precious Motsepe, and Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa and Dikembe Mutombo of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Source: proquest.com

Jaji, Tsitsi Ella. Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity. Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition, 2014.

Africa in Stereo analyzes how Africans have engaged with African American music and its representations in the long twentieth century (1890-2011) to offer a new cultural history attesting to pan-Africanism's ongoing and open theoretical potential. Tsitsi Jaji argues that African American popular music appealed to continental Africans as a unit of cultural prestige, a site of pleasure, and most importantly, an expressive formal ready encoded with strategies of creative resistance to racial hegemony. Ghana, Senegal and South Africa are considered as three distinctive sites where longstanding pan-African political and cultural affiliations gave expression to transnational black solidarity. The book shows how such transnational ties fostered what Jaji terms stereo modernism. Attending to the specificity of various media through which music was transmitted and interpreted-poetry, novels, films, recordings, festivals, live performances and websites-stereo modernism accounts for the
role of cultural practice in the emergence of solidarity, tapping music's capacity to refresh our understanding of twentieth-century black transnational ties.

[Source: Books.goole.ca].

Jalloh, Alusine. “Muslim Fula Business Elites and Politics in Sierra Leone.” African Economic History 35, no. 35 (2007): 89–104. https://doi.org/10.2307/25427036.

This essay examines Fula business-government relations in post independence Sierra Leone. It focuses on Muslim Fula business elites. In particular, the essay examines two key themes where the Fula interacted with the Sierra Leonean government: immigration and business. The period covered is from 1961, the date of independence, under the rule of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) led by Sir Milton Margai.

Source: Extract from article's introduction.