Pub Date : 2021-10-27DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1872279
Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka
ABSTRACT In this essay, I argue that the ritual aesthetics of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman present special challenges when teaching students and producing plays for audiences in the United States. Reflecting on my choreography and collaboration with director Femi Euba on the 2008 production of Death and the King’s Horseman at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, I discuss the play’s reliance on dance for dramatic storytelling and the tonal sensibilities in the text’s approach to English. In my work as a choreographer, I created a layered process to teach performers in the Kalamazoo production how to embody the tonal textures of the verse. This principle of the play’s dramatic language was the central inspiration for my choreography – a detailed choreography of words. Through performance, the dancers translated these often-misunderstood elements of Soyinka’s text, and in doing so, facilitated an illuminating connection between the play and its audience.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-27DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2019.1647646
Eric Mayer-García
ABSTRACT In this essay, I define Femi Euba’s theater in respect to his multifaceted career as an actor, playwright, and critic. As I narrate Euba’s artistic trajectory, I keep Wole Soyinka in sight, reflecting on the ways his mentorship and collaboration opened pathways in theater, creative writing and criticism that Euba, as a prominent member of Soyinka’s circle, utilized and took in new directions. In discussing Euba’s theory of Drama of Epidemic, his acting performance of Colonel Moses in Òpèrá Wónyòsi (1977), and his play The Gulf (1991), I argue that Euba’s theatrical works are defined by the crossroads, a flexible paradigm that informs intercultural creativity, as well as temporal transgressions. I argue that multitemporality in Euba’s works creates a postcolonial futurity, which aligns agency over processes of becoming with an ongoing struggle in the present to make sense of the aftermath of slavery and colonialism.
{"title":"Esu’s crossroads and Ogun’s crossing over: Intercultural creativity and postcolonial futurity in the theater of Femi Euba","authors":"Eric Mayer-García","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2019.1647646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2019.1647646","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this essay, I define Femi Euba’s theater in respect to his multifaceted career as an actor, playwright, and critic. As I narrate Euba’s artistic trajectory, I keep Wole Soyinka in sight, reflecting on the ways his mentorship and collaboration opened pathways in theater, creative writing and criticism that Euba, as a prominent member of Soyinka’s circle, utilized and took in new directions. In discussing Euba’s theory of Drama of Epidemic, his acting performance of Colonel Moses in Òpèrá Wónyòsi (1977), and his play The Gulf (1991), I argue that Euba’s theatrical works are defined by the crossroads, a flexible paradigm that informs intercultural creativity, as well as temporal transgressions. I argue that multitemporality in Euba’s works creates a postcolonial futurity, which aligns agency over processes of becoming with an ongoing struggle in the present to make sense of the aftermath of slavery and colonialism.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"526 - 545"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49156724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-27DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1955583
Eric Mayer-García, Solimar Otero
ABSTRACT This introduction to essays collected in “Esu’s Crossroads: Transcultural Creativity in the works of Femi Euba and Wole Soyinka” weaves together eight contributions considering the writings and theatrical productions of Femi Euba together with those of his mentor and collaborator, Wole Soyinka. Esu, the Yoruba trickster and Orisa of the crossroads, brings cohesion to this project and serves as a guiding principle for its contributors who highlight different aspects of Esu’s mysteries as they relate to our collective consideration of Soyinka’s and Euba’s works. In different ways, each contribution in the collection emphasizes generational thinking as a way of deepening understanding of the works of both mentor and mentee through their relationship with one another.
{"title":"Crossroads of generational thinking","authors":"Eric Mayer-García, Solimar Otero","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2021.1955583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1955583","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This introduction to essays collected in “Esu’s Crossroads: Transcultural Creativity in the works of Femi Euba and Wole Soyinka” weaves together eight contributions considering the writings and theatrical productions of Femi Euba together with those of his mentor and collaborator, Wole Soyinka. Esu, the Yoruba trickster and Orisa of the crossroads, brings cohesion to this project and serves as a guiding principle for its contributors who highlight different aspects of Esu’s mysteries as they relate to our collective consideration of Soyinka’s and Euba’s works. In different ways, each contribution in the collection emphasizes generational thinking as a way of deepening understanding of the works of both mentor and mentee through their relationship with one another.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"481 - 498"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45875096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-27DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2020.1866947
J. Lowe
ABSTRACT This testimonial essay about the career of Femi Euba, written from the perspective of a colleague, sheds light on Euba’s contributions to Atlantic Studies through creative writing, theater-making, and literary criticism. Before the groundswell of diasporan and Atlantic Studies began, Euba pointed to the centrality of West African myth, ritual, and performance in the literatures and cultures of the Americas. Alongside critics like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., he added to the body of comparative work on Esu in the African diaspora. I discuss Euba’s novel Camwood at Crossroads and his play The Eye of Gabriel with respect to postmodern and postcolonial cultural theory as well as his own theories of Black Atlantic culture. The essay highlights how Euba’s career has influenced multiple circles, from larger academic discourses like Africana Studies to the community of his students and colleagues at Louisiana State University.
{"title":"Myth, performance, and creation: The achievement of Femi Euba","authors":"J. Lowe","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2020.1866947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2020.1866947","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This testimonial essay about the career of Femi Euba, written from the perspective of a colleague, sheds light on Euba’s contributions to Atlantic Studies through creative writing, theater-making, and literary criticism. Before the groundswell of diasporan and Atlantic Studies began, Euba pointed to the centrality of West African myth, ritual, and performance in the literatures and cultures of the Americas. Alongside critics like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., he added to the body of comparative work on Esu in the African diaspora. I discuss Euba’s novel Camwood at Crossroads and his play The Eye of Gabriel with respect to postmodern and postcolonial cultural theory as well as his own theories of Black Atlantic culture. The essay highlights how Euba’s career has influenced multiple circles, from larger academic discourses like Africana Studies to the community of his students and colleagues at Louisiana State University.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"584 - 593"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43378514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-25DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1943272
Femi Euba
ABSTRACT The essay is based on a paper given at the “Symposium of African Literature in Global Perspectives” at the University of Kansas, sponsored by the Hall Center for the Humanities. It reflects thoughts on the predicaments of an emigrant African writer in his attempts to gain wider exposure on the global stage. In the process, the essay questions the validity of equal and reciprocal cultural and economic benefits that globalization is supposed to provide for African authors and participating theatre directors, producers, literary agents, and audiences.
{"title":"Globalization and a grain of salt: Reflections of a participating emigrant-playwright","authors":"Femi Euba","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2021.1943272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1943272","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The essay is based on a paper given at the “Symposium of African Literature in Global Perspectives” at the University of Kansas, sponsored by the Hall Center for the Humanities. It reflects thoughts on the predicaments of an emigrant African writer in his attempts to gain wider exposure on the global stage. In the process, the essay questions the validity of equal and reciprocal cultural and economic benefits that globalization is supposed to provide for African authors and participating theatre directors, producers, literary agents, and audiences.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"610 - 618"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47693874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1991772
A. Pålsson
ABSTRACT By examining the census records of Swedish-Caribbean colony St. Barthélemy, a GIS – Geographic Information System – can be constructed which maps the inhabitants of the harbor city of Gustavia, as well as the inhabitants’ placement within the census categories of the colonial administration. This article examines these categories and how they shifted over time, as well as maps out patterns of settlement across the city. One major finding is the division between the Catholic French-Caribbean side on the east and the Anglican Anglo- and Dutch-Caribbean side of the west, the latter of which was home to a number of merchants owning high amounts of enslaved people. This spatial division was also parallel to the political differences between the merchant elite and the Swedish colonial administration. Furthermore, this article encourages additional GIS studies of predemocratic Caribbean cities, particularly regarding spatial division between whites and free people of color.
{"title":"Diversity and division: Digital mapping of censuses in the Swedish Caribbean, 1835–1872","authors":"A. Pålsson","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2021.1991772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1991772","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT By examining the census records of Swedish-Caribbean colony St. Barthélemy, a GIS – Geographic Information System – can be constructed which maps the inhabitants of the harbor city of Gustavia, as well as the inhabitants’ placement within the census categories of the colonial administration. This article examines these categories and how they shifted over time, as well as maps out patterns of settlement across the city. One major finding is the division between the Catholic French-Caribbean side on the east and the Anglican Anglo- and Dutch-Caribbean side of the west, the latter of which was home to a number of merchants owning high amounts of enslaved people. This spatial division was also parallel to the political differences between the merchant elite and the Swedish colonial administration. Furthermore, this article encourages additional GIS studies of predemocratic Caribbean cities, particularly regarding spatial division between whites and free people of color.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"20 1","pages":"109 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43815417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-27DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1981712
A. Helg
ABSTRACT Few topics have drawn more attention nor elicited as much debate within the fields of Atlantic History, Slavery Studies, and African Diaspora Studies than slave resistance and rebellion. Since at least the 1940s, scholars have argued about what constitutes resistance, what motivated slave rebels, agency, and how best to approach the documentary record among many other topics. More so than in most subfields, scholarship on slave resistance often resonates with contemporary political and cultural movements for racial equity. This review essay considers three new works on slave resistance.
{"title":"Slave rebellion, war, and fear in the early modern Atlantic world","authors":"A. Helg","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2021.1981712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1981712","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Few topics have drawn more attention nor elicited as much debate within the fields of Atlantic History, Slavery Studies, and African Diaspora Studies than slave resistance and rebellion. Since at least the 1940s, scholars have argued about what constitutes resistance, what motivated slave rebels, agency, and how best to approach the documentary record among many other topics. More so than in most subfields, scholarship on slave resistance often resonates with contemporary political and cultural movements for racial equity. This review essay considers three new works on slave resistance.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"305 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41942999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1972759
Jemima Hodgkinson
ABSTRACT The early twentieth century saw an increase in the transatlantic circulation of African American poetry, evidenced in anthologies published in the 1930s and 1940s. This article traces earlier instances of this trend by focusing on the translation of poetry among periodicals during the 1920s. Adopting George Bornstein’s “bibliographic code” as a methodological approach, I trace the transatlantic itineraries of three poems by Langston Hughes, Sterling A. Brown, and James Weldon Johnson. A reading of the interlingual translation against its bibliographic code reveals the ironies and intricacies of texts in circulation, products of translation practices seeking to transcend structures of national particularity, and editorial practices seeking to reify them.
{"title":"The mediated text: Transatlantic circulation among periodicals of interwar African American poetry","authors":"Jemima Hodgkinson","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2021.1972759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1972759","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The early twentieth century saw an increase in the transatlantic circulation of African American poetry, evidenced in anthologies published in the 1930s and 1940s. This article traces earlier instances of this trend by focusing on the translation of poetry among periodicals during the 1920s. Adopting George Bornstein’s “bibliographic code” as a methodological approach, I trace the transatlantic itineraries of three poems by Langston Hughes, Sterling A. Brown, and James Weldon Johnson. A reading of the interlingual translation against its bibliographic code reveals the ironies and intricacies of texts in circulation, products of translation practices seeking to transcend structures of national particularity, and editorial practices seeking to reify them.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"352 - 372"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45383220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-25DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1941723
Emily Senior, S. Thomas
ABSTRACT This is the introduction to the collection of essays dedicated to colonial Caribbean visual cultures between 1750 and 1900. Examining the ways of seeing that emerged under the conditions of slavery and its immediate aftermath, this piece explores some of the methodological and theoretical challenges of working with the visual and material afterlives of empire. What traces of Black lives can yet be mined in the fragments and biases of the colonial archive? How were images and objects produced, circulated and viewed in colonial contexts? What forms of resistance are revealed by a focus on visual cultures? This introduction considers strategies for responding creatively and ethically to the gaps and silences that haunt this archive, and for recovering the resilience, resistance, knowledge and “everyday” of Black lived experience.
{"title":"Colonial ways of seeing: Caribbean visual cultures 1750–1900","authors":"Emily Senior, S. Thomas","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2021.1941723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1941723","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This is the introduction to the collection of essays dedicated to colonial Caribbean visual cultures between 1750 and 1900. Examining the ways of seeing that emerged under the conditions of slavery and its immediate aftermath, this piece explores some of the methodological and theoretical challenges of working with the visual and material afterlives of empire. What traces of Black lives can yet be mined in the fragments and biases of the colonial archive? How were images and objects produced, circulated and viewed in colonial contexts? What forms of resistance are revealed by a focus on visual cultures? This introduction considers strategies for responding creatively and ethically to the gaps and silences that haunt this archive, and for recovering the resilience, resistance, knowledge and “everyday” of Black lived experience.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"1 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48305173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-25DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2021.1909319
Elizabeth A. Bohls
ABSTRACT French lithographer Adolphe Duperly created three remarkable prints in 1833, between Jamaica's last slave revolt (1831–1832) and Emancipation (1834). He appropriated images from James Hakewill's Picturesque Tour of [ … ] Jamaica, calling his prints “occurrences,” a designation whose historical specificity contrasts with the timelessness of the picturesque. Duperly adds rebelling slaves, depicting them in ambiguous ways evoking both threat and celebration. Their figures are individualized, unlike earlier depictions of the enslaved as staffage figures or disciplined laborers. Colored by white paranoia, Duperly's images nonetheless suggest an incipient coming to terms with a changed relationship between free and formerly enslaved Jamaicans. His 1838 lithograph, Commemorative of the Extinction of Slavery, continues this trend. Unlike contemporaries Hakewill and Joseph Kidd, Duperly settled in Jamaica, establishing a business maintained by his family into the twentieth century. His commitment to the colony helps explain the unprecedented visibility given to black Jamaicans in his art.
{"title":"Adolphe Duperly's rebellion prints and the historical moment of emancipation","authors":"Elizabeth A. Bohls","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2021.1909319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.1909319","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT French lithographer Adolphe Duperly created three remarkable prints in 1833, between Jamaica's last slave revolt (1831–1832) and Emancipation (1834). He appropriated images from James Hakewill's Picturesque Tour of [ … ] Jamaica, calling his prints “occurrences,” a designation whose historical specificity contrasts with the timelessness of the picturesque. Duperly adds rebelling slaves, depicting them in ambiguous ways evoking both threat and celebration. Their figures are individualized, unlike earlier depictions of the enslaved as staffage figures or disciplined laborers. Colored by white paranoia, Duperly's images nonetheless suggest an incipient coming to terms with a changed relationship between free and formerly enslaved Jamaicans. His 1838 lithograph, Commemorative of the Extinction of Slavery, continues this trend. Unlike contemporaries Hakewill and Joseph Kidd, Duperly settled in Jamaica, establishing a business maintained by his family into the twentieth century. His commitment to the colony helps explain the unprecedented visibility given to black Jamaicans in his art.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":"19 1","pages":"107 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44718942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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