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Africa Past and Present is hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by MATRIX. Subscribe to the podcast on the Africa Past and Present website and on iTunes.

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Africa Past and Present is hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by MATRIX. Subscribe to the podcast on our website and on iTunes.

Episode 57 features African activists Eddie Daniels and Christine Root, who discuss spending a lifetime working for African liberation. Daniels work in South Africa led to his imprisonment alongside Nelson Mandela on Robben Island from 1964-1979, while Root worked in solidarity with such struggles from the U.S. as Associate Director of the Washington Office on Africa.

The African Activist Archive, a Michigan State University project cosponsored by Matrix and the African Studies Center, preserves records and memories of ordinary Americans supporting the African fight against colonialism and apartheid.

Episode 56 features Dr. Gary Morgan, Michigan State University Museum Director, on African masks and the Great Dance (Gule Wamkulu) in Chewa society, Malawi. He discusses the origins and characters of Gule Wamkulu, and gender, political, educational and health aspects of masks and their future in a globalizing world. This podcast accompanies the MSU Museum exhibition on masks and the first major book on Gule Wamkulu with Claude Boucher of the Kungoni Centre of Culture and Art, Mua, Malawi.

Photo: Greya character (copyright Gary Morgan)

 Reflecting on several years’ experience hosting Africa Past and Present, “Podcasting the Past” explores the role of podcasting in the production and dissemination of historical knowledge about Africa and South Africa in a global context.  Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources, the paper examines technical aspects, issues of audience and access across the digital divide, podcasting as a new form of scholarly publishing, and the impact of podcasting on teaching about Africa. Africa Past and Present represents an unusual example of changing trends in the academic disciplines of history and area studies in the digital age; shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and issues and debates of relevance to Africans at home and abroad, all seeking to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences. The paper concludes that podcasting can be a powerful technological tool with which to democratize knowledge, enrich classroom learning, and propel the “increasing incorporation of ‘Africa’ and ‘Africans’ within the new streams of academic and even popular discourse.” 

 Africa Past and Present is co-hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by Matrix. An online digital archive of all shows, as well as links to multimedia resources and collections of relevance to African experiences can be found at http://afripod.aodl.org/.

Episode 55 features Derek Peterson (University of Michigan) on the politics and practice of archives in East Africa, the precarious state of some archives, and exciting possibilities of preservation and digitization at Mountains of the Moon University in Uganda; “homespun” historians in Recasting the African Past and Mau Mau prisons in Kenya; and his forthcoming book Pilgrims & Patriots: Conversion, Dissent, & the Making of Civil Societies in East Africa.

This growing collection of video interviews and photographs features the voices of Muslim men and women who live and work in Kumasi, the second largest city in the West African country of Ghana. Interviewees reflect on the ways Islam influences their activities at home, with their neighbors, and at work as traders, tailors, and teachers.  Gracia Clark, Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, who made her field research freely accessible on this site, hopes this collection will contribute towards better understanding between Ghanaian Muslims and their neighbors in North America and in Africa.

Everyday Islam in Kumasi is part of the Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa digital library.  Each collection in this digital library sheds much-needed light on how Muslims in West Africa accept religious difference and create productive interactions among Christians, Muslims, and followers of other faiths.

Funding for this project is provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program and by Michigan State University.

This fiftieth episode marks over three years of a podcast that is now downloaded monthly by nearly 20,000 listeners in over 80 countries. Matrix is proud to be part of such an ongoing success, and hopes the show continues to expand in scope and audience.

Horace Campbell

Episode 50: Political Change in Africa and the Diaspora is now live at http://afripod.aodl.org

Horace Campbell (African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse U.) on political change in Africa and the Diaspora. Focus is on the revolution in Libya, popular revolts, war, peace, and neo-liberalism in Africa and beyond. Campbell also shares insights from his new book: Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA.

Africa Past and Present is hosted by Michigan State University historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb and produced by Matrix.

Historian Paul Landau (University of Maryland) on rethinking the broad history of Southern Africa from 1400 to 1948. His new book re-asserts African agency by seeing Africans in motion, coming out of their own past. Drawing on oral traditions, genealogies, 19th-century conversations, and other sources, Landau highlights the resilience of African political cultures and their adeptness at incorporating diverse peoples.