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Cooperation Jackson’s Kali Akuno: Climate Crisis Impact Worse in Black Cities Facing Disinvestment

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We speak with an evacuated resident of Jackson, Mississippi, where over 180,000 residents are on their third day without access to running water. We speak with longtime Jackson activist Kali Akuno, co-founder of Cooperation Jackson, who joins us from New Orleans, where he went when floods recently inundated the majority-Black city and shut down the main water plant. He attributes the water crisis to decades of white flight and the subsequent disinvestment in majority-Black and Brown cities. “What we are experiencing now is literally just the crumbling of the empire’s infrastructure,” notes Akuno, who also says he fears the state government will push to privatize or regionalize Jackson’s water system instead of giving the city adequate resources to stabilize it.

Mississippi water crisis extends into fourth day

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In Jackson, Mississippi, authorities are struggling to get the city’s water treatment plant back online. The humanitarian crisis for nearly 200,000 residents is in its fourth day and has left residents asking how an American city can be without clean water in 2022. Elise Preston reports.

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A Brief History of the American Labor Movement (LIVE AT 8PM ET)

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African Studies Library Hosts West African Research Center (WARC) Librarian Badara Sarr | African Studies Center

Gabe Adugna, B.U. African Studies Library & Aliou Badara Sarr,
Chief Librarian of the West Africa Research Center (WARC), July 2022

The African Studies Library (ASL) recently hosted Aliou Badara Sarr, Chief Librarian of the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar, Senegal, for a three-week training and networking visit. The West African Research Center is an overseas research center for the West African Research Association (WARA), whose US program is based here at Boston University. The Center in Dakar serves a key role in facilitating academic exchange and research between American and West African scholars.

The ASL Librarians assisted Mr. Sarr in the planning and drafting of a collection development plan for the WARC Library, creating a library web page and becoming familiar with the cataloging and patron management functions of their library system, LibraryWorld.

While he was here, Mr. Sarr had opportunity to tour Harvard University’s Widener and Lamont Libraries. He also had a virtual meeting with Dr. Gerald Rizzo and ASC Research Affiliate Dr. Tim Weiskelconcerning the Afriterra Cartographic Free Library and its digital map collections. Perhaps the most meaningful and unexpected part of his visit was a meeting with Boston Public School (BPS) librarians at Fenway High School. This connection led to a serendipitous follow-up visit to the Hennigan K-8 School in Jamaica Plan, where librarians were in the process of setting up LibraryWorld as the new system for their school library. They graciously invited Badara to join them and follow along, working on his own library’s instance of LibraryWorld.

Good communication and clear goals that were articulated both before and during the visit ensured Mr. Sarr’s time at BU was successful. Mr. Sarr identified specific topics and issues at the outset and a flexible schedule allowed for prioritization. He was also able to work directly in his own library catalog, testing out various real-life scenarios and potential problems with ASL staff helping to troubleshoot and serve as thought partners.

Mr. Sarr arrived in Boston with a library catalog housed on a Google spreadsheet and a list of patrons recorded on a handwritten form. He returned to Senegal with a functioning online library catalog and website, an online form to register library patrons and record their visits, and boxes full of barcodes and barcode scanners to greatly facilitate circulation of books. So much was accomplished within a short three weeks! The visit exceeded expectations on all sides and culminated in a wonderful presentation that Mr. Sarr made to the BU Libraries Staff the day before his departure.

Supported by funding from the US Department of Education through its designation of the ASC as a Title VI National Resource Center for African studies, Mr. Sarr’s visit contributed to BU’s strategic priority for global engagement and paves the way for further collaboration with WARC and other international partners.

African Studies Library Hosts West African Research Center (WARC) Librarian Badara Sarr

Posted1 month ago on Wednesday, July 27th, 2022 in Center News

The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement , 1684–1706

Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita was a young Kongolese woman who in 1704 claimed to be possessed by St. Anthony, argued that Jesus was a Kongolese, criticized Italian Capuchin missionaries for not supporting black saints, and attempted to stop the devastating cycle of civil wars between contenders for the Kongolese throne. She was burned at the stake in 1706. Background information is supplied on Kongo, the development of Catholicism there, and the role of local warfare in the Atlantic slave trade.

Review

“Thornton’s study of Beatriz Kimpa Vita is a new departure in slave studies. African history is propelled to the fore; Thornton’s approach taps the potential of the Afro-centric vision.” Paul Lovejoy, York University

“Perhaps the greatest of the many achievements of Thornton’s book is its depiction of Africans in very much the same terms that he, and most other European or American writers, would use to describe their own pasts. With that, Thornton bridges the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that still lurks subtly in much scholarship on Africa. This is accordingly a book for non-specialists in many fields–and that is not to say that Africanists will not also find it fascinating.” Joseph C. Miller, University of Virginia

“…a most impressive study.” Richard Gray, The Catholic Historical Review

“John K. Thornton’s study of political and religious turmoil in the Kongo kingdom at the close of the seventeenth century will appeal to several audiences…” Wyatt MacGaffey, The International History Review

“…this is a very good publication, which portrays in a very lively way a society and conflicts hidden for almost three centuries. The narrative has a certain dramatic, almost Shakespearean tension, which is likely to engross the reader’s attention.” International Journal of African Historical Studies

“Thornton presents a fascinating and comprehensive account of the Christian movement led by Donna Beatriz Kimpa Vita in the Kingdom of the Kongo, from her birth in 1684 until her death….This study relies upon an impressive body of sources.” Journal of Women’s History

“Altogether this is a masterly reconstruction of events in late seventeenth-century Kongo by an experienced scholar who for over twenty years has published on many aspects of Kongo history from politics top demography, from church history to family history, and from the slave trade to the diaspora. Thornton’s acquaintance with a host of difficult sources is well displayed.” American Historical Review

“The Kongolese Saint Anthony…reflects a superb mastery of the rich multilayered texture of the Kongolese Christian experience….immensely pleasing….the unexpected twists and subplots provide ample footholds for the most tentative reader….the book constitutes a valuable academic resource. That it makes a pleasant read is surely a welcome bonus.” Church History

“I know of no other book that recreates the history of precolonial African society in such a vivid and compelling way. It should become standard reading in courses on African history and diaspora history.” Historian, Robert Harms, Yale University

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0521593700
• Publisher‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; 1st Edition (May 13, 1998)
• Language‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover‏ : ‎ 238 pages
• ISBN-10‏ : ‎ 9780521593700
• ISBN-13‏ : ‎ 978-0521593700
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.08 pounds
• Dimensions‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.56 x 9 inches

The History of Cartography, Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment (Volume 4)

Since its launch in 1987, the History of Cartography series has garnered critical acclaim and sparked a new generation of interdisciplinary scholarship. Cartography in the European Enlightenment, the highly anticipated fourth volume, offers a comprehensive overview of the cartographic practices of Europeans, Russians, and the Ottomans, both at home and in overseas territories, from 1650 to 1800.

The social and intellectual changes that swept Enlightenment Europe also transformed many of its mapmaking practices. A new emphasis on geometric principles gave rise to improved tools for measuring and mapping the world, even as large-scale cartographic projects became possible under the aegis of powerful states. Yet older mapping practices persisted: Enlightenment cartography encompassed a wide variety of processes for making, circulating, and using maps of different types. The volume’s more than four hundred encyclopedic articles explore the era’s mapping, covering topics both detailed—such as geodetic surveying, thematic mapping, and map collecting—and broad, such as women and cartography, cartography and the economy, and the art and design of maps. Copious bibliographical references and nearly one thousand full-color illustrations complement the detailed entries.

Review

“It is impossible to do justice to this magnificent production in a brief review. The volume provides hundreds of up-to-date bibliographical references; comprehensive treatments of key people, institutions and themes; and keen insights and interpretations. It will serve as the indispensable scholarly resource for the study of early-modern maps and mapping for decades.” ― Imago Mundi

“This two-part volume of mapping and mapping practices during the European Enlightenment is an impressive contribution to the history of cartography.” ― H-Net

“The volume provides hundreds of up-to-date bibliographical references; comprehensive treatments of key people, institutions and themes; and keen insights and interpretations. It will serve as the indispensable scholarly resource for the study of early- modern maps and mapping for decades.” ― Taylor & Francis

“The value of The History of Cartography to those interested in maps has long been a given, and one further affirmed by the project’s scale, which is unlikely to be matched. The importance of an understanding of maps to broader intellectual, cultural, and political currents emerges clearly, as does the very delight of maps. Indeed, as an aesthetic product, the two “parts,” each substantial volumes themselves, of this one ‘volume,’ with the total weight almost sixteen pounds, are a triumph.” ― The New Criterion

“It is brilliant, continuing the already very high standards of what is the most significant series in cartographic history ever published. . . . A must for anyone interested in maps or the Enlightenment, and a work that whets the appetite for the next volume due out, that on the nineteenth century.” ― The Critic (UK)

About the Author

Matthew H. Edney is Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of Cartography: The Ideal and Its History and Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.

• Publisher‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; First edition (May 18, 2020)
• Language‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover‏ : ‎ 1920 pages
• ISBN-10‏ : ‎ 0226184757
• ISBN-13‏ : ‎ 978-0226184753
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 17.05 pounds
• Dimensions‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 6.6 x 11 inches

See related:

• The History of Cartography, Volume Four: Cartography in the European Enlightenment – Book Trailer
• The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire (The Kenneth Nebenzahl Jr. Lectures in the History of Cartography)
• The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian: Including Historical Maps of All Roman Imperial Regions eBook : Mommsen, Theodor, Kiepert, Richard, Dickson, William P.
• History of the World Map by Map | Smithsonian Institution
• The Africa Map Circle – Introduction & Digital Resource Directory