Category Archives: Africa

The Consequences of Representation

Posted on December 21, 2005 by Timothy Burke

John Holbo was kind enough to pick up on my posting about tropes for my Image of Africa course this semester and add a new item, a really interesting one: the extent to which imaginative fictions feel comfortable inventing countries, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Popular Culture | 8 Comments

The Africa Beat

Posted on December 20, 2005 by Timothy Burke

Hardly anybody likes the mass media. Everybody likes to beat up on them, use them as an alibi for their own intellectual or political shortcomings. Academics have a particular form of that aversion: journalism appears to many of them relentlessly … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 4 Comments

The Course That Never Was

Posted on November 28, 2005 by Timothy Burke

For the first time in eleven years, a class of mine hasn’t filled enough to be worth teaching: I only had two students sign up for it. I’ve had a few other small courses from time to time, but I … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa | 11 Comments

Book Notes: Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight

Posted on November 14, 2005 by Timothy Burke

Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight has been met with justified acclaim. I use this book in my courses quite a bit, and now I’ve suggested it to some Swarthmore alumni reading groups (whose members would be … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Books | 5 Comments

Passages

Posted on September 5, 2005 by Timothy Burke

I’ve been meaning for a while to blog about Passages, which is a web-based revival of a publication started and maintained by my graduate advisor, David William Cohen. I helped put together one of the original issues in the early … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Blogging | 7 Comments

Show Some Class

Posted on August 26, 2005 by Timothy Burke

Living in Zimbabwe for about a year and a half in two separate stays, one in the early 1990s, one near the end of the same decade, I found that there were a number of basic things about the government … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Politics | 3 Comments

Image of Africa Syllabus

Posted on August 25, 2005 by Timothy Burke

Here’s the syllabus for one of my fall courses. I’ve taught it before, but this is a fairly substantial fiddling with some of what I’ve done in the past. It’s a topic also that I’ve really changed my pedagogical orientation … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Popular Culture | 12 Comments

Constitutional

Posted on August 25, 2005 by Timothy Burke

There are really only a small handful of historical cases where constitutions have actually exerted real authority over later generations, have actually organized or channeled social and political conflicts. Mostly modern constitutions are like bad peace accords between fundamentally antagonistic … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Politics | 2 Comments

She’s a Riot

Posted on August 11, 2005 by Timothy Burke

South Africa’s Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka comments that South Africa can learn a lot from Zimbabwe’s land reform, namely, how to do it faster. South Africa needs a bit of “oomph”, she says, and maybe should get some colleagues from … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 2 Comments

DeLong, Diamond and Savage Minds

Posted on July 29, 2005 by Timothy Burke

[cross-posted at Cliopatria] Brad DeLong has been fairly harsh in his response to the Savage Minds bloggers on the subject of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. I also have problems with the SM bloggers in their reading (or viewing) … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Books | 6 Comments