Tiyambe Zeleza

This collection of essays interrogates the repositioning of Africa and its diasporas in the unfolding disruptive transformations of the early twenty-first century. It is divided into five parts focusing on America's racial dysfunctions, navigating global turbulence, Africa's political dramas, the continent's persistent mythologisation and disruptions in higher education. It closes with tributes to two towering African public intellectuals, Ali Mazrui and Thandika Mkandawire, who have since joined the ancestors.

"The author seeks to address the perplexing question of what it means to be a person of African descent living outside of the African continent. He offers the reader fascinating and richly textured portraits and surveys of the diversity of diasporic lives as well as the abiding connections of the diaspora condition. What makes this book particularly gripping are the multilayered narratives, the braided stories and explorations of African diasporic lives across many contexts and places as well as the author's own life during the period of his travels from 2006 to 2009. Also skillfully interwoven are the author's daily encounters and observations, information and reflections from interviewees from all walks of life, and the larger structural contexts of diaspora struggles for enfranchisement and empowerment."

"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?"--"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."

"The editors have chosen work by a wide range of African scholars to explain the roots, routes, regimes and resolution of African conflicts and how to re-build post-conflict societies. The contributors offer sober and serious analyses, avoiding the sensationalism of the western media and the Afropessimism of some of the scholars in the global North. The search for peace is too important to be left to outsiders, however well intentioned. The editors find it encouraging to see that a growing number of African scholars are interested in exploring and engaging with this crucial subject."--book jacket.

183 pages ; 20 cm