The Book in Africa Critical Debates

by Davis, Caroline; Johnson, David

• ISBN13: 9781137401618
• ISBN10: 1137401613
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-03-04
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This volume presents new research and critical debates in African book history, and brings together a range of disciplinary perspectives by leading scholars in the subject. It includes case studies from across Africa - from Ethiopia to Cameroon, from Morocco to South Africa - and from third-century manuscript traditions to twenty-first century internet communications. Throughout, it seeks to frame individual case studies in ways that resonate with critical debates in African book history throughout the continent. Studies of the book in Africa to date have been dominated by the histories of how European missionaries, colonial administrators and traders brought the book and literacy to Africa. In contrast, this volume places African book histories in their multiple forms at the centre of study; and the research, questions and debates driving each chapter are derived from African cultural, political and economic contexts.

Author Biography

Caroline Davis is Senior Lecturer in the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and she is responsible for courses in book history and print culture on the MA and BA Publishing programmes. She is the author of Creating Postcolonial Literature: African Writers and British Publishers (2013).

David Johnson is Professor of Literature in the Department of English at The Open University, UK. He is the author of Imagining the Cape Colony (2012) and Shakespeare and South Africa (1996), the principal author of Jurisprudence: A South African Perspective (2001), and co-editor of A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English (2005).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Notes on the Contributors
Introduction
PART I: FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT
1. Copying and Circulation in South Africa's Reading Cultures, 1780-1840; Archie L. Dick
2. Printing as an Agent of Change in Morocco, 1864-1912; Fawzi Abdulrazak
3. Between Manuscripts and Books: Islamic Printing in Ethiopia; Alessandro Gori
4. Making Book History in Timbuktu; Shamil Jeppie
PART II: POLITICS AND PROFIT IN AFRICAN PRINT CULTURES
5. Print Culture and Imagining the Union of South Africa; David Johnson
6. Creating a Book Empire: Longmans in Africa; Caroline Davis
7. From Royalism to E-secessionism: Lozi Histories and Ethnic Politics in Zambia; Jack Hogan and Giacomo Macola
8. Between the Cathedral and the Market: A Study of Wits University Press; Elizabeth Le Roux
PART III: THE MAKING OF AFRICAN LITERATURE
9. Francophone African Literary Prizes and the 'Empire of the French Language'; Ruth Bush and Claire Ducournau
10. Heinemann's African Writers Series and the Rise of James Ngugi; Nourdin Bejjit
11. The Publishing and Digital Dissemination of Creative Writing in Cameroon; Joyce B. Ashuntantang
Index