Category Archives: Africa

Border Guards

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Timothy Burke

I was thinking of writing a One-a-Day post about Tim Weiner’s compelling history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes. (I’ve been reading books, just not blogging about my reading. I’ll catch up soon.) Then I read Stephen Weissman’s critique of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Books | 1 Comment

One-A-Day: Norman Rush, Mating

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Timothy Burke

This is an essay on Norman Rush’s Mating that I wrote up for the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors blog, Critical Mass.

Posted in Africa, Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | Comments Off

One-A-Day, David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin, eds., History of Central Africa Volume 1

Posted on January 28, 2008 by Timothy Burke

Students looking at the piles of books strewn over my desk, my windowsill, my bookshelves and my floor sometimes understate things a bit and say, “You have a lot of books”. (One reason I don’t really want to move again, … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | Comments Off

One-A-Day, Tsuneo Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe: A Social History of Harare Before 1925

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Timothy Burke

I have a tendency to oversell the value of a generalist approach to academic work, partly to try and defend my own practices and interests. I genuinely think that many specialist monographs fail to make a case for their importance, … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 10 Comments

Prisoner’s Dilemma, Ethnic-Conflict Style

Posted on January 2, 2008 by Timothy Burke

On various listservs, African Studies scholars are buzzing with irritation about coverage of the political turmoil in Kenya following the election. (I’m continuing the Hate-the-NY-Times Week.) I think they’re right to complain in this case, for several reasons. Jeffrey Gettleman’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 2 Comments

History 8C From Leopold to Kabilia: The Bad Twentieth Century in Central Africa

Posted on December 21, 2007 by Timothy Burke

Here’s the last of my three syllabi for the spring of 2008. ——– History 8C From Leopold to Kabila: The Bad Twentieth Century in Central Africa Spring 2008 Professor Burke x8115 Trotter 206 This course is a survey focusing centrally … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

Traveller IQ Challenge and Learning

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Timothy Burke

The Traveller IQ Challenge, besides being a great little bit of casual-game design, strikes me as showing how potentially useful certain kinds of instant-feedback quizzes and games could be in a fully wired classroom, while also showing the limitations of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Popular Culture | 8 Comments

Z is for Zuma

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Timothy Burke

Jacob Zuma is now on track to be South Africa’s third president. This alone does not worry me too much. Maybe the most frequent question I get from friends, students, and acquaintances about African affairs is how I see South … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 3 Comments

In Which I Pick Some Nits

Posted on November 3, 2007 by Timothy Burke

If there’s two things I’ve come to dislike equally, it’s bad fantasies with dragon characters (cough Eragon) and bad speculative fiction that recreates Horatio Hornblower or other Napoleonic-era stories (cough David Weber). So I really thought there was no way … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Popular Culture | 13 Comments

Anti-Canute

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Timothy Burke

King Canute took on the waves to demonstrate the limits of his power to his subjects, who asked him to do the impossible. Robert Mugabe is the kind of authoritarian who thinks that the waves ought to obey him, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 5 Comments