ASL Resources of the Week 12-9-2021
Library News
We want to wish our students all the best as you wrap up final projects and begin to prepare for exams! Please be aware of the following schedule changes:
Extended study hours! Mugar Memorial Library will be open 24 hours for the duration of study period and finals. An overnight shuttle service will be provided for students (for more information, please visit our website). The African Studies Library Reading Room will also be offering extended hours to 9pm beginning this Monday (12/13) through Wednesday (12/15).
Intersession: The BU Libraries will be closed Wednesday (12/22) through Sunday (01/02).
Reminder: Entry to the Mugar Library requires that you display your green Covid attestation and swipe your BU ID at the gate. If you wish to visit and do not have a BU ID, contact us.
Contact us: email- asl@bu.edu
phone- 617-353-3726
ask-a-librarian service: https://askalibrarian.bu.edu/
New Library Acquisitions!
Here is a sampling of our newer acquisitions. If you know of a title or database that the African Studies Library ought to have, we encourage you to fill out the Resource Suggestion Form. Please do not assume resources have been purchased or will be purchased without a request
China in Africa : FDI, Tax and Trends of the New African Geo-economics
Lorenzo Riccardi and Giorgio Riccardi; 2021
This book highlights China’s engagement with Africa through trade, investment and financial linkages. [It] provides insights into Chinese FDI in Africa, by exploring a range of infrastructural projects and several countries’ historical, geographical, socio-political, cultural and economic backgrounds. [It also] presents the main double taxation treaties with China. China’s investments in Africa — Belt Road Initiative – Algeria — Egypt — Ethiopia — Morocco — South Africa — Tunisia – Zimbabwe..
Available online
Finding Dr. Livingstone : a history in documents from the Henry Morton Stanley Archives.
Leduc-Grimaldi, Mathilde (editor) ; Newman, James L. (editor); 2020
In Finding Dr. Livingstone, Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi and James L. Newman transcribe and annotate the entirety of Stanley’s trip documentation, now owned by the Roi Baudouin Foundation in Brussels, Belgium. They thus make available in print for the first time a trove that includes worker contracts, vernacular plant names, maps, ruminations on life, lines of poetry, bills of lading-all scribbled in his field notebooks. This book is vastly more expansive and different in emphasis from Stanley’s version, with invaluable insights into the experiences of his African carriers, soldiers, and servants.
Available in Mugar Library Stacks DT351 .F56 2020
Ports et réseaux d’échanges dans le Maghreb médiéval
Valérian, Dominique; 2019.
Longtemps considéré comme une région périphérique en Méditerranée et dans l’Islam, le Maghreb médiéval est au contraire très tôt intégré dans des réseaux d’échanges… Connecté à la fois à l’Orient, à l’Afrique subsaharienne et à la Méditerranée, le Maghreb islamique s’insère entre le viie et le xve siècle dans des connexions complexes qui donnent à ses ports un rôle croissant dans les échanges commerciaux, mais aussi plus largement dans la structuration de l’espace maghrébin et méditerranéen… L’analyse des sources arabes et latines permet ainsi de montrer comment ..
Available online via Directory of Open Access Books
Rodās Tādasa ; Gétnat Falaqa ʼAyāne. 2011[EC]/2019[GC]
The authors a Theologian/Philologist and an Astrophysicist respectively provide an important work introducing ancient Ethiopian studies of astronomy and astrology, as recorded in Ethiopic parchments, and how it compares with modern science. Written in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, the book examines intellectual history of planetary and space knowledge in Ethiopia. It also contains section with explanation of Ethiopian Calendar system.
Available in Mugar Library Stacks QB858.42 .R63 2019
FEATURED RESOURCES
Your librarians’ suggestions of for leisure reading and/or viewing during the Intersession and winter break:
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
This is a good choice if you are interested in a long, epic novel. This debut novel tells a story of a family in Zambia, spanning generations and genres. Contains: sex, violence.
RD
Available at the Boston Public Library
If you’ve ever asked me for a fiction recommendation, you’ve probably already heard about this debut novel. If you like dark humor this is a fun and fast page-turner—some chapters are only a page long! Yet afterwards I couldn’t stop thinking about the issues it raises: about what we owe to family- both truly unbreakable bonds and the rote obligations enforced by society; about the women men don’t see and the women they think they see; about amorality and moral absolutism. Obviously, this is about a serial killer: contains violence, abuse, death. RD
In the company of men
Tadjo, Véronique ; Cullen, John (translator) ; 2021
“Drawing on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa, this poignant, timely fable reflects on both the strength and the fragility of life and humanity’s place in the world… Acutely relevant to our times in light of the coronavirus pandemic, In the Company of Men explores critical questions about how we cope with a global crisis and how we can combat fear and prejudice.” BR
Transparent city
Ondjaki, ; Henighan, Stephen (translator) ; 2018
“In a crumbling apartment block in the Angolan city of Luanda, families work, laugh, scheme, and get by. In the middle of it all is the melancholic Odonato, nostalgic for the country of his youth and searching for his lost son. As his hope drains away and as the city outside his doors changes beyond all recognition, Odonato’s flesh becomes transparent and his body increasingly weightless. A captivating blend of magical realism, scathing political satire, tender comedy, and literary experimentation, Transparent City offers a gripping and joyful portrait of urban Africa quite unlike any before yet published in English, and places Ondjaki, indisputably, among the continent’s most accomplished writers.” BR
Diop Mambéty, Djibril (film director). 2014 Mambety adapts a timeless parable of human greed into a biting satire of today’s Africa – betraying the hopes of independence for the false promises of Western materialism and creates a stylized, fabular world structured around an implacable logic, the logic of the marketplace, the “reign of the hyena.”Available for viewing with BU Login until January 20, 2022. GA
Sembène, Ousmane (film director, screenwriter); 1966 (Re-released 2017)
“Ousmane Sembène … made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot–about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally–into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world”–Container. Available for viewing with BU Login until January 20, 2022. GA