The Oral History Of The Manding Empire

There has long been a need for a new textbook on West Africa’s history. In Themes in West Africa’s History, editor Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and his contributors meet this need, examining key themes in West Africa’s prehistory to the present through the lenses of their different disciplines. The contents of the book comprise an introduction and thirteen chapters divided into three parts. Each chapter provides an overview of existing literature on major topics, as well as a short list of recommended reading, and breaks new ground through the incorporation of original research. The first part of the book examines paths to a West African past, including perspectives from archaeology, ecology and culture, linguistics, and oral traditions. Part two probes environment, society, and agency and historical change through essays on the slave trade, social inequality, religious interaction, poverty, disease, and urbanization. Part three sheds light on contemporary West Africa in exploring how economic and political developments have shaped religious expression and identity in significant ways. Themes in West Africa’s History represents a range of intellectual views and interpretations from leading scholars on West Africa’s history. It will appeal to college undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in the way it draws on different disciplines and expertise to bring together key themes in West Africa’s history, from prehistory to the present.

This fresh and thought-provoking book deepens our understanding of the dynamic relationship between the creation of myth and the development of the ancient Greek polis, or city-state, during crucial periods in archaic and classical Greece. Examining the diverse texts which crystallized Greek oral tradition, nine chapters by a multidisciplinary group of scholars focus both on the role of the community as the shaper and transmitter of myth and on the function of myth and ritual in the development of political authority in Greek society. Myth and the Polis draws upon current research in such fields such as ancient history, philology, social anthropology, ethnomusicology, comparative literature, psychoanalysis, folklore, and political theory. Taken together, the essays highlight the continuos struggle of Greek archaic and classical communities to keep their myths "true" in spite of the pull of pan-Hellenism. Shedding new light on the beginnings of Western civilization, Myth and the Polis will be of interest to a wide range of readers, including scholars and students of classics, folklore, myth, and ancient religion, politics, and history.

This book is interdisciplinary, drawing on the sociology and politics of language, African linguistics, African history and social history in general. It focuses on the various issues related to multilingualism in West Africa, but is also relevant to multilingual situations in Third World countries generally. Although the book is aimed at the educated general reader, it should also be of interest to language specialists and students of Third World politics.

This book describes the remarkable culture of jeliya, a musical and verbal art from the Manding region of West Africa. Using an embodied practice as her methodology, the author reveals how she and her music teachers live “in between” local and global cultures. Her journey spans 20 years of fieldwork presented through personal and intimate stories, first as a student of the balafon instrument, then as a patron of the music. Tensions build in both the music and in social relations that require resolutions, underscoring the differences between two world views. Through balafon lessons, the author embodies values such as patience, courage, and generosity, resulting in a transformative practice that leads her to better understand her position vis-à-vis that of her jeli teachers. Meanwhile, jeliya itself, despite having been transmitted from teacher to student for 800 years, is currently in peril. Jelis cite modern globalized culture and people like the author herself as both a source of the problem as well as the potential solution.

RES 59/60 includes “The making of architectural types” by Joseph Rykwert; “Traces of the sun and Inka kinetics” by Tom Cummins and Bruce Mannheim; “Inka water management and display fountains” by Carolyn Dean; “Guaman Poma’s pictures of huacas” by Lisa Trever; “Peruvian nature up close” by Daniela Bleichmar; and other papers.