East Africa and the Classical Tradition

Welcome to the third episode in our new series of audio podcasts!

We’re delighted to have teamed up with Carla Bocchetti from IFRA (French Institute for Research in Africa) in Nairobi to produce an episode all about a new volume that she’s edited, East Africa, Global History and the Classical Traditions. 

The volume is a special issue of the journal Les Cahiers d’Afrique de l’Est: you can read the entire text on the IFRA Nairobi website. As Carla explains, her aim in editing this volume was to bring Classics into a conversation with other disciplines (including the study of ‘Global History’), to show how “the global circulation of classical references in Africa make it possible to open a new dialogue with other traditions circulating in the rim of the Indian ocean world.”

This episode features the voices of five authors who wrote chapters for the volume:

Carla Bocchetti (IFRA Nairobi)

Phiroze Vasunia (University College London)

Daniel Orrells (King’s College London)

Sarah Longair (University of Lincoln)

Gordon Omenya (Pwani University)

 

You can listen to the episode on our OU podcast channel. You can also listen (and subscribe to the podcast) on iTunes.

Alternatively, you can listen on Soundcloud.

 

Further Reading

If you’d like to read more about the topics discussed in this audio, here are some suggestions

• East Africa, Global History and the Classical Traditions edited by Carla Bocchetti (2016, Les Cahiers d’Afrique de l’Est 51). 
• African Athena: New Agendas, edited by Daniel Orrells, Gurminder Bhambra and Tessa Roynon (2011, Oxford University Press).
• The Mudimbe Reader, edited by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture and Daniel Orrells (2016, University of Virginia Press)
• The Classics and Colonial India, by Phiroze Vasunia (2013, Oxford University Press).
• Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897-1964, by Sarah Longair (2015, Routledge)
• History Through Material Culture, by Leonie Hannan and Sarah Longair (2017, Manchester University Press) 
• The Uses and Management of Culture by Kenya County Governments by Gordon Omenya and Mark Lamont

 

Further Viewing

In this section of the webpage, you’ll find a video that Henry Stead made on the day that we recorded with Carla, Phiroze and Dan in London, as well as some photographs of buildings and monuments discussed in the podcast (click on the photos to enlarge them).