History

This paper interrogates the linguistic grounding of battle rap in Afro-based cultural practices, and the transformative power the understated art form possesses within the African American community. An integral part of hip-hop from the beginning, ‘battling’ has grown into a distinct subculture in recent years. Because of its oft-unmitigated rawness, it is often viewed as a lesser artistic form that embodies the worst of the violence, misogyny and other societal ills that hip-hop is accused of promoting. This paper argues
that battle rap is not a corruption of Black culture: it is the modern incarnation of long-held oral, competitive, and communal traditions that can be traced throughout the African American experience and, in many cases, to Africa. Understanding the deep-rooted cultural significance of battle rap allows it to be recognized for its nuanced intricacies, as well as its didactic and restorative potential within our communities.

Widely regarded, by historians and the populace alike, as one of the enduring symbols of Zimbabwean nationalism, the Nehanda spirit is as relevant and controversial today as it was during the colonial era. Going back centuries, the spirit was most famously embodied by Zezuru anticolonialist and spirit medium Charwe, before she was executed by British colonialists in 1898. As the “New Dispensation” attempts to craft a legacy as stewards of a Zimbabwean identity in general, and the anticolonial revolution in particular, the image of Nehanda Charwe has again become a critical battleground for contrasting national agendas. While the Mnangagwa-led administration has reinvigorated conversations around celebrating the medium, most prominently through a statue in Harare, many others dispute the idea as a case of misplaced priorities, ethnic chauvinism, and gendered tokenism. This chapter seeks to explore and contextualize the various and often contradictory ways that the memory of Nehanda (and Charwe) has been utilized during the Second Republic, and in what ways that represents a departure from past eras. Critically, the study interrogates what we learn about Zimbabwe as a nation in this current moment, as understood through the lens of the Nehanda debates.

Introduction On April 18th, 1980, Zimbabwe obtained its independence, marking the end of the brutal guerrilla war for liberation that began in the 1960s. This rebirth of a nation came with proclamations of national reconciliation and unity, famously articulated in new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe's inaugural speech. Given the tumultuous history of the Southern African country, the task of reconciliation was always going to be a challenge. Not only had Blacks fought against White colonial rule, there had been rival factions in the Black community, whether politician, militant, or civilian. One of the pillars of this reconciliation was the consolidation of Rhodesian Armed Forces (the military of the colonial government) with Zimbawean People' Liberation Army (ZIPRA) and Zimbabwean National Liberation Army (ZANLA), the armed wings of the two main Black nationalist organizations Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) respectively, i...

This paper provides an analysis of select canonical texts in the first two decades of fictional African literature in Zimbabwe produced between 1956 and 1975 that investigates the critical relationship between these early works and the contemporaneous rise and establishment of African nationalism

This is a dissertation study that traces the transformations, reveals the tensions, and critically analyzes diverging and converging trajectories of different manifestations of African nationalism, including ethnic nationalism, state nationalism, and Pan-Africanism using contemporary South Africa and Zimbabwe as sites of analyses. Focusing on the metropolitan provinces of Gauteng and Harare respectively, I use the study to interrogate how popular expressions of African nationalism have emerged and evolved in the neighboring nations during their anti-colonial/anti-apartheid struggles throughout the 20th century, and how they exist today. Presenting a thesis that I call nationalisms from below, the research study reveals how these manifestations of nationalism are imagined, practiced, and represented by the initiatives and actions of different members of the civil society including artists, activists, laborers, and migrants in the two countries’ contemporary politics and society.

My findings lead to a nuanced determination of the factors that influence the intersections, divergences, and convergences of what I refer to in the study as Africa’s tripartite nationalist expressions and identities—ethnicism, African Nationalism, and Pan- Africanism. Critically, the study also aims to disrupt traditional elitist conceptualizations
of these phenomena by employing a critical bottom-up approach that gives agency to oft- marginalized participants in the manifestation of nationalism in its various incarnations: the general populace along with its multiple identities and contradictions.
The study interrogates the interrelations among ethnic nationalism, state and national nationalism, and Pan-Africanism, using South Africa and Zimbabwe as case studies that both represent the larger postcolonial region, yet also bear distinct dynamics birthed out of the histories of settler colonialism and the late advent of majority rule. In so doing, I demonstrate the relevance and manifestations of nationalism and Pan- Africanism in the everyday lives of Black South Africans and Zimbabweans. While using the two countries as a window into the general condition of postcolonial Africa, the research also interrogates how their distinct history of settler colonialisms, racialism, and delayed transitions to democracy have shaped the ways in which the populace in the two countries engage with Pan-Africanism and African nationalism

At the turn of the 20th century, the Zimbabwean government implemented a land redistribution program to rectify colonial-era disparities. Despite being remembered as a hallmark of the decolonial efforts spearheaded by President Robert Mugabe, this article argues the land question in Zimbabwe has always been and steered by the masses in their various constituencies-even when the government appeared reluctant toward reform. This is best represented through popular post-independence cultural expressions, including song, literature, poetry, and theater that have centered land in their negotiations of what it means to be Zimbabwean. In this article, I argue these artistic-cultural spaces are instructive in reconfiguring and recentering the popular roots of land reform in post-2000 Zimbabwe at a time when most of the scholarship tends to simplistically conflate land reform with Mugabeism.

Contemporary conversations on the twentieth-century study of Africa1 have, to a significant extent, revolved around the need for increased and elaborate African agency. While this agency may take different forms, I propose that we could condense the discourse to three critical tenets. First, contemporary Africanist scholarship should distinguish the communities with which they are working, specifying the distinct condition of that community in relation to those that surround them. Secondly, Africanist scholarship calls for the elevation of communities from objects of study to partners in knowledge production. Finally, scholarship and, particularly, Western Africanist scholarship, must be constantly conscious of engaging existing local and African scholarship on the relevant communities and topic – even if only for context.

It is within this academic moment that Signs of the Spirit has been published. Centred on the intersection of music and spirit-invoking ritual among the Ndau people of Eastern Zimbabwe, Tony Perman’s ethnomusicological project triumphs on several fronts, yet falls into some of the seemingly inevitable traps of agency outlined in the opening paragraph.

Since its emergence as a discernible genre in the late 2000s, Zimdancehall has established itself as an incomparable avenue of socio-political expression among the urban youth. It has also, however, been condemned for its apparent vulgarity, violence, and all-round seeming departure
from the civility which largely defined Zimbabwean music in the yesteryear. How are we, as scholars and the community, to reconcile these two characterizations of the genre? This study seeks to show that, rather than being paradoxical, the two are complementary: it is the irreverence of the genre that has made it effective in its confrontation of contemporary crises.
Conversely, the unrelenting nature of the contemporary crises facilitated the emergence of an irreverent genre.

In this chapter, I argue that the contemporaneous emergence of the genre with the political and economic abyss of post-colonial Zimbabwe has not been coincidental: the two are intrinsically connected. As such, I interrogate the relationship between the two phenomena through an analytical lens that draws attention to Zimdancehall’s disruptive messaging, as
exemplified through four recurrent themes: direct confrontation of authorities; explicit criticism of both the lived conditions of the urban poor; defiant assertion of parochial and individual agency; and the irreverent subversion of traditional societal expectations. The study aims to
propagate a more nuanced conversation around this critical genre and the subculture it represents—in as much as they impact and are impacted by the socio-political and economic environment out of which they emerge.

This thesis looks at the effects of the Spanish conquest on the diet and social structure of the Tarascan people of Michoacán in the 16th century. Looking at the period from conquest to the early days of the 17th century, this work charts how the Tarascans identified with their food and how the introduction of new foods changed these markers. This change in diet accompanied changes in social structure and disruptions in the lifestyles of both noble and common indigenous peoples. This work identifies the relationships between these disruptions and the development of diets throughout the era of conquest and colonization.

Electricity has been defined by American society as a modern and clean form of energy since it came into practical use at the end of the nineteenth century, yet no comprehensive study exists which examines the roots of these definitions. This dissertation considers the social meanings of electricity as an energy technology that became adopted between the midnineteenth
and early decades of the twentieth centuries. Arguing that both technical and cultural factors played a role, this study shows how electricity became an abstracted form of energy in the minds of Americans. As technological advancements allowed for an increasing physical distance between power generation and power consumption, the commodity of electricity became consciously detached from the steam and coal that produced it. This
factor, along with cultural factors led the public to define electricity as mysterious, utopian, and an alternative to proximal fire-based energy sources. With its adoption occurring simultaneously with Progressivism and consumerism, electricity use was encouraged and seen as a integral part of improvement and modernity which led Americans to culturally construct electricity as unlimited and environmentally inconsequential.

If you are likable, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about your field, your students will want to learn. If you talk about the leaders in your area and the latest breakthroughs in your discipline, students will be motivated to learn even more. If you encourage your students—the simple feedback note on an essay or test that says “I think you have the potential to master this material, and here is how you can do better” you can change a life. If you can impart content through stories that students can relate to it sparks interest and understanding.  Being an empathetic human is always the best technique in the classroom.

We're in the midst of another presidential election cycle in the U.S., what President Obama once eloquently referred to as the political "silly season." Any historian will tell you that political campaigns in the United States are always built on the manipulation of information, and are now characterized by the sound bite and the latest gotcha distributed by Twitter. As current campaigns have taken advantage of the ubiquitous nature of contemporary communication technology, they have also leveraged the decline in information literacy brought about by lazy consumption.

We're in the midst of another presidential election cycle in the U.S., what President Obama once eloquently referred to as the political "silly season." Any historian will tell you that political campaigns in the United States are always built on the manipulation of information, and are now characterized by the sound bite and the latest gotcha distributed by Twitter. As current campaigns have taken advantage of the ubiquitous nature of contemporary communication technology, they have also leveraged the decline in information literacy brought about by lazy consumption.

We're in the midst of another presidential election cycle in the U.S., what President Obama once eloquently referred to as the political "silly season." Any historian will tell you that political campaigns in the United States are always built on the manipulation of information, and are now characterized by the sound bite and the latest gotcha distributed by Twitter. As current campaigns have taken advantage of the ubiquitous nature of contemporary communication technology, they have also leveraged the decline in information literacy brought about by lazy consumption. While politics is a symptom and not the cause of a general degradation in the way society consumes and assigns meaning to information, it does serve as a metaphorical canary in a coal mine, warning us of the possible social dangers that lie ahead. It may not be the end of the world as we know it, but we do need to consider what is happening around us and why. As an author, educator, and historian, I do have opinions on politics and social issues, but on campus, I try hard to remain neutral, open, and empathetic to all points of view. I want my students to know that their positions on issues are as valid as mine, and my goal is to help students become smart, active, and critical consumers of information, not passive lemmings who are spoon fed single-sourced information and take it as the truth. The evidence suggests that we're in an era of post-intellectual lazy consumption, and the ramifications are frightening, both in politics and society in general. Credible science and alt-truth myths are blended, processed, packaged, and narrow-casted to an audience who seldom considers the source or the intention of the message. For many, absolute truths come in the form of a 280 character limit message on a five-inch screen, and neither Alexa or Siri ever ask if you would like to hear evidence or an opposing point of view. Because a real understanding of scientific, social, and political truths takes work-that is, one has to check several sources to arrive at an accurate conclusion-it has opened the door to the acceptance of alternative facts and the memes of fake news. Consuming and assigning credibility to the first thing one reads or hears is easy; investigating other points of view is hard. We now