Top Results for African Contemporary

Germaine Acogny is a pioneering choreographer recognized for her significant contributions to contemporary dance. Born in Senegal, she established Mudra Afrique in 1977, fostering a vital space for African-inspired movement. Her work blends traditional Senegalese influences with modern techniques, p...

Paul Lovejoy is a Canadian historian associated with York University whose research examines African slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, the African diaspora, and Islam in West Africa. His book Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, first published in 1983, studies slavery a...

John Iliffe is a British historian of Africa whose work addresses the continent's social, economic, and political history. He held a professorship at the University of Cambridge and wrote Africans: The History of a Continent, first published in 1995. That book presents a long-range history of Africa...

Patrick Manning is an American historian whose research connects African history with the history of migration, slavery, the African diaspora, and global exchange. He founded and directed World History Centers at Northeastern University and the University of Pittsburgh, where he was also associated...

Mahmood Mamdani is a Ugandan-born scholar of African politics and history who is a professor of government and anthropology at Columbia University. His 1996 book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism analyzes how colonial governments organized political identities an...

Steven Feierman is an American historian and anthropologist whose research centers on East Africa, especially Tanzania, and on the relationship between social history, political change, and medical knowledge. His book Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania, published in 1990, ex...

Luise White is an American historian of East Africa whose work examines colonialism, urban life, violence, rumor, and popular interpretations of power. Her book Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa, published in 2000, used stories about vampires and blood extraction as histor...

Ralph A. Austen was an American historian of Africa and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. His research examined African economic history and historical change, with particular attention to trans-Saharan trade, slavery, Islam, colonialism, and long-distance commerce. His book Trans-Sah...

Myron Echenberg was a Canadian historian whose research focused on West African history, French colonialism, and the relationships between African societies and European imperial institutions. His 1991 book Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960 examines the...

AbdouMaliq Simone is an urban scholar whose work examines everyday life, infrastructure and collective action in African and other cities of the Global South. In For the City Yet to Come, published in 2004, he explored how residents create workable social and economic arrangements amid limited forma...

Dada Masilo is a South African contemporary dancer and choreographer known for deconstructing and reimagining classical European ballets. Trained in Johannesburg and at the Performing Arts Research and Training School (P.A.R.T.S) in Brussels, she creates works that fuse traditional ballet vocabulary...

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, essayist, and political activist whose writing draws on Yoruba traditions, European dramatic forms, satire, and the history of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. His major plays include Death and the King's Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel, and...

Zeitz MOCAA is a contemporary art museum in Cape Town, South Africa, that opened in 2017 in a converted grain silo complex at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. The museum was designed by British architect Thomas Heatherwick and focuses on 21st-century art from Africa and its diaspora. It is among th...

Nora Chipaumire is a Zimbabwean-born, New York-based contemporary choreographer and dancer whose works rigorously examine themes of Black identity, colonialism, and the African body. Her performances are known for their intense, avant-garde physicality and often challenge conventional Western views...

Ben Okri, born in 1959 in Minna, Nigeria, is a poet and novelist whose fiction blends magical realism with African mythological and oral storytelling traditions. He won the 1991 Booker Prize for Fiction for The Famished Road, the first book in a trilogy continued by Songs of Enchantment (1993) and I...

Circus Baobab is a contemporary African circus troupe founded in Guinea in 1998. The company is distinguished by its integration of traditional West African music, dance, and acrobatic storytelling, diverging from the conventional European circus format. The troupe was formed to provide professional...

Salia Sanou is a Burkinabé choreographer and dancer considered a significant figure in contemporary African dance. He co-founded the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique La Termitière in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, an institution created to support and promote choreographic work by African artists....

Mokena Makeka is a South African architect whose Cape Town Station upgrade improved circulation and security before the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The African Renaissance Monument is a 49-metre bronze monument in Dakar, Senegal. Unveiled in 2010, it depicts a man, woman, and child rising together above a high pedestal, with the man's arm extended toward the horizon. The monument represents an official vision of African renewal and is a promine...