Author Archives

Author at www.AfricainWords.com Dr Hastings works on the intersection between gender, education and Africa, most recently in terms of the work of a early 20C teacher in colonial Lagos.
Fascinated by texts, Igbo-learner, book junkie and Freshlyground fan. Teaches African history, gender history and interdisciplinary gender and urban studies.

• Is your reading really ‘useful’? Maryse Condé in Cape Town – ‘The Story of the Cannibal Woman’

  By C E Hastings on 1 June , 2015 • ( 3 )

  

  I’ve recently picked up Tim Parks’ collection of essays Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books (2014).  One of the essays in Part 2, ‘The Book In the World’, entitled ‘Writing Adrift in the World’, critiques post-colonial literary… Read More ›

• ‘Ratnakara’ (the creator of gems): photography across the Indian Ocean

  By C E Hastings on 21 April , 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  I’m a big fan of the digitisation projects going on around universities and archives to make historical photographs accessible to everyone. Whilst it’s amazing to see an original daguerrotype, beautifully preserved and framed (or even in a special collection room… Read More ›

• Accessing academic texts on Africa beyond the firewall: New African Histories (Ohio University Press)

  By C E Hastings on 23 March , 2015 • ( 0 )

  Open Access, the campaign to make scholarship free to read for everyone, not just those who have paid to get past the firewalls, continues to gain ground. It’s still difficult to access academic texts for those without access to university libraries. Scribd is… Read More ›

• Read more! On lists, labels and limits for ‘African women’s writing’

  By C E Hastings on 24 February , 2015 • ( 3 )

  

  Inspired by Dele Meiji Fatunla and Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed‘s list of 50 women writers they believe ‘everyone’ should read, I’m hoping to complete their list of recommendations in 2015. It includes exciting developments in publishing over recent years, as well as many of’the… Read More ›

• Compelling narratives: stretching ‘memoir’ in ‘African lives’

  By C E Hastings on 19 February , 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  Geoff Wisner sets himself a sizeable task in ‘African Lives’, to introduce the life-writing of the continent: I don’t envy this anthologist. His introduction makes the case for the long history of autobiographical writing in Africa. Wisner argues it needs to be rescued, to be… Read More ›

• The Supreme Price: Thinking about ‘wives’ and the gender of political leadership

  By C E Hastings on 1 December , 2014 • ( 3 )

  

  For me ‘The Supreme Price’ reflects a conflict many working with questions of gender and politics in history will recognise. How to measure the significance of women who attain power through men (husbands, fathers, sons)? How important is it to distinguish between women as figureheads… Read More ›

• ‘My First Coup’: autobiographies of childhood

  By C E Hastings on 24 November , 2014 • ( 5 )

  

  My auntie and the headmistress tried as best they could, with smiles and toffee, to shield me from their rising anxiety, but I could feel it bouncing off the quick sideways glances they shot each other and taking flight like… Read More ›

• “All the talk in WWI seems to be about France…”*

  By C E Hastings on 20 November , 2014 • ( 12 )

  

   Why were Africans consigned to the margins, sometimes altogether erased, when the drama of this war was narrated? (Okey Ndibe) Okey Ndibe‘s comment above reflected on the absence of acknowledgement for Africa and Africans in terms of a different global war,… Read More ›

• “Out in Africa: Same-sex desire in sub saharan literatures and cultures” by Chantal Zabus (Review)

  By C E Hastings on 20 October , 2014 • ( 1 )

  

    Mama still reminds me every once in a while that there are penalties in Nigeria for that sort of thing. And of course, she’s right. I’ve read of them in the newspapers and have heard of them on the… Read More ›

• Printing across borders: African newspaper cultures (ASAUK2014)

  By C E Hastings on 15 September , 2014 • ( 0 )

  

  Following AiW’s opening readings.. 'stories that have never been shared': Alex Ntung reads from his work @AlexMvuka #ASAUK2014 http://t.co/v5IcceytDu— Africa in Words (@AfricainWords) September 09, 2014   whirlwind literary tour, from Uganda to Kenya to Nigeria, Rwanda in the first… Read More ›

• Portraiture & Photography in Africa

  By C E Hastings on 14 July , 2014 • ( 1 )

  

  Peffer and Cameron’s new edited collection brings together disparate accounts of photography in Africa, revising and developing what is, as they point out, still a relatively new field, despite the work of (for example) Paul Jenkins and Paul Landau that… Read More ›

• Precarious texts? a new autobiography project

  By C E Hastings on 3 June , 2014 • ( 2 )

  

  If you talk to a researcher about their PhD, I have found that there comes a moment when they reveal the ‘hidden’ thesis, the one they didn’t quite write. In history, this is sometimes prevented by archival destruction (recent or ancient),… Read More ›

• Words on Teaching – “Visual sources in the classroom – after ‘Teaching Difficult Subjects’ (Birmingham)”

  By C E Hastings on 1 April , 2014 • ( 2 )

  

  Last month I attended a seminar day at Birmingham, ‘Teaching Difficult Subjects’ (organised by the Higher Education Academy in the UK). Although the full content of the day was fascinating (and wide ranging) encompassing genocide, holocaust and ‘war studies’, I… Read More ›

• CFP: African Trajectories: Travel and the Archive

  By C E Hastings on 7 March , 2014 • ( 0 )

  SCOLMA (the UK Libraries and Archives Group on Africa)  Annual Conference African Trajectories: Travel and the Archive   2 July 2014 University of Birmingham   CALL FOR PAPERS “Travel, in the younger sort, is part of education; in the elder,… Read More ›

• Announcement: African Poetry Book Fund

  By C E Hastings on 24 February , 2014 • ( 0 )

  

  The African Poetry Book Fund announces its three African poetry titles for 2014. The launch titles are: The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems 1964-2013 by Kofi Awoonor Madman at Kalifi by Clifton Gachagua Seven New Generation African Poets,… Read More ›

• Words on Teaching – “Book Review: Teaching Africa”

  By C E Hastings on 27 January , 2014 • ( 1 )

  

  As a relatively new teacher of African history at universities, I am keen to find publications that will help me reflect upon, and develop my work. Unlike in most American PhD programmes (I understand) teaching isn’t part of the core… Read More ›

• African Classics: Kristin Mann’s Marrying Well

  By C E Hastings on 9 January , 2014 • ( 0 )

  

  Sometimes apparently everyday topics of life can lead to rich rewards in terms of historical study. One example of this is (I hope she won’t mind me saying) is Kristin Mann’s study of men and women’s marrying patterns in Lagos… Read More ›

• Perhaps you missed (Festive 2013 edition)

  By C E Hastings on 30 December , 2013 • ( 0 )

  

  Following on from last week’s Mandela retrospective, here are some posts readers may wish to revisit – or discover for the first time from the AiW 2013 archive. If you’re a fan of the ‘best of’ lists that dominate publishing… Read More ›

• ‘Open Access’ images of Africa?

  By C E Hastings on 12 December , 2013 • ( 0 )

  

  In Jurg Schneider’s recent post for Africa in Words he wrote of the way in which photographs make up a part of a huge although highly decentralized visual archive which is open-ended and still dynamically in the making. Jurg provided links… Read More ›

• ‘I slowly came to the realisation that the secondary sources on Asante religion and chieftaincy were incomplete’: African Classics

  By C E Hastings on 7 October , 2013 • ( 4 )

  

  I’m delighted to introduce this post from Africa in Words Guest author, Louise Müller for the ‘African classics’ series. As Nara discussed last week, this series aims to give a fresh or alternative insight, giving our readers a chance to… Read More ›