It is impossible to study Africa without understanding the debate about how to study Africa. At last, a book showcases the complexities and paradoxes of Africa's recent and more distant history, while avoiding simplistic, Eurocentric conceptualizations of "black Africa." With this book, Peyi Soyinka-Aiwerele and Rita Kiki Edozie offer students the background and perspectives they need to comprehend the dynamics of the continent as well as a clear path through the current literature and scholarly debate. With a cross-disciplinary approach that features political, historical, and economic analysis as well as popular culture and sociological views on contemporary issues, Reframing Contemporary Africa provides an unparalleled breadth of coverage. Essays written by a distinguished and international group of scholars-including William Ackah, Pius Adesanmi, Susan Craddock, Caroline Elkins, Siba Grovogui, Mahmood Mamdani, Mutua Makau, Celestin Monga, Wole Soyinka, and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza-are designed to distill original scholarship for undergraduate readers. Each contribution helps students engage with the work and arguments of luminaries while exposing them to renowned African thinkers. Contributors deliver analysis that allows students to see beyond the cliches commonly presented in the media (and even in scholarship), and helpful section openers by Soyinka-Airewele and Edozie frame forthcoming chapters, giving important thematic and historical context. Reframing Contemporary Africa will certainly provoke new debate and reflection, not merely about African issues and politics, but also about the West and its framing of Africa.
Peyi Soyinka-Airewele is associate professor at Ithaca College where she teaches international and comparative politics with an emphasis on African politics and socio-political transitions. She is a fellow of the Global Security and Cooperation (GSC) program of the Social Science Research Council and the Director of the Alliance for Community Transformation (Africa). Her research on the politics of memory in African political transitions has received recognition from many quarters, including a GSC fellowship, an invitation to help prepare the final report of the Nigerian Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, and most recently, Fellowship of the Oxford Round Table (Women's Leadership). She is the author of Invoking the Past, Conjuring the Nation: Memory, Communal Citizenship and Cathartic Violence. Rita Kiki Edozie is a professor of international relations at Michigan State University where she researches African affairs, comparative politics, democratization, and international political economy, with a focus on development. She is the author of People Power and Democracy: The Popular Movement Against Military Despotism in Nigeria, 1989-1999 and Reconstructing Africa's Third Wave: Comparative African Democratic Politics.
