The Study of Africa. Volume 1: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters

This two-volume collection is not even an ordinary encyclopaedia for the study of the continent. Rather, it establishes entirely new parameters for Africanist scholarship. Without a doubt, an offering to celebrate among Africans, Africanists, and anyone interested in answering the question: What is Africa’s place in the world today?”

Ato Quayson, Professor of English and Director Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto, Canada.

“This important publication provides the most comprehensive and critical analyses of Africa studies in the world today. Globally, the book reveals a fundamental, though depressing, fact that the terms of global intellectual exchange are unequal. There is therefore the need to construct an African ‘library’, a body of knowledge that can fully encompass, engage, and examine African phenomena. And it is the responsibility of African scholars, both in the continent and in diaspora, to spearhead this struggle for intellectual decolonization and deconstruction.”

Bethwell A. Ogot, Chancellor, Moi University, Professor Emeritus of History Maseno University, Kenya.

“Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has put together a timely publication that presents admirably critical assessments of the role and relevance of ‘African Studies’—its content, its march from Eurocentrism to be solidly based in contemporary Africa and its place within the globalization agenda—in its wider political and socio-economic contexts. These discussions will provide scholars, policymakers and practitioners with useful insights into the continuing challenges and opportunities for African studies be it disciplinary or interdisciplinary; be it in Africa or anywhere else.”

Professor Lennart Wohlgemuth, Centre for African Studies, Gothenburg University, formerly Director Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden.

“These two volumes will be indispensable reading to anyone with an interest in African Studies and in the production of knowledge on Africa. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has assembled an impressive international group of contributors who address a range of important topics including the disciplines and interdisciplinarity in African Studies, the histories and politics of African Studies in different national contexts outside and within the continent, and the role of the African diaspora in the globalization of knowledge on Africa. Both volumes are framed and contextualised by masterly introductions by the editor which in themselves will become required reading in our field.”

Megan Vaughan, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.