Results by title
66 books match the query 'Central' and 6 start with c
Casement
Angus Mitchell
Haus Publishing, 2026
An illumination of the life of diplomat Roger Casement.
At the time of his execution for treason in 1916, few were aware who Roger Casement was or what he represented. Since then, he has been lauded for his investigations into Belgian brutality in the Congo Free State and human rights abuses in the Peruvian rubber industry, but much else about him has remained obscured behind speculation about his sexuality and secret Irish revolutionary activity while in service of the British Empire. As such, his place in history has been ill-defined and multifarious: his involvement in the waging of war followed by the delicate negotiation of peace; his republicanism perceived variously as an eccentric enthusiasm and as a threat to the British Empire; his contemporary legacy overshadowed by the Black Diaries of disputed legitimacy, detailing alleged liaisons with young men.
In Casement, Angus Mitchell illuminates a life shrouded in mystery, which operated in the conflicting spheres of British foreign diplomacy and Irish revolutionary activity. Considering Casement’s rebellious nature, Mitchell asks if it was motivated as much by his “incorrigible” Irishness as by his exposure of the appalling crimes against humanity that he witnessed in Africa and South America. Most significantly, Casement demonstrates that his legacy cannot be ascribed to just one cause, whether as a critic of global colonialism or as a founding father of the modern Irish nation-state. Casement’s true commitment was to a universal understanding based on humanity, tolerance, and justice.
At the time of his execution for treason in 1916, few were aware who Roger Casement was or what he represented. Since then, he has been lauded for his investigations into Belgian brutality in the Congo Free State and human rights abuses in the Peruvian rubber industry, but much else about him has remained obscured behind speculation about his sexuality and secret Irish revolutionary activity while in service of the British Empire. As such, his place in history has been ill-defined and multifarious: his involvement in the waging of war followed by the delicate negotiation of peace; his republicanism perceived variously as an eccentric enthusiasm and as a threat to the British Empire; his contemporary legacy overshadowed by the Black Diaries of disputed legitimacy, detailing alleged liaisons with young men.
In Casement, Angus Mitchell illuminates a life shrouded in mystery, which operated in the conflicting spheres of British foreign diplomacy and Irish revolutionary activity. Considering Casement’s rebellious nature, Mitchell asks if it was motivated as much by his “incorrigible” Irishness as by his exposure of the appalling crimes against humanity that he witnessed in Africa and South America. Most significantly, Casement demonstrates that his legacy cannot be ascribed to just one cause, whether as a critic of global colonialism or as a founding father of the modern Irish nation-state. Casement’s true commitment was to a universal understanding based on humanity, tolerance, and justice.
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Changing Tropical Forests
Historical Perspectives on Today’s Challenges in Central and South AmericaHarold K. Steen and Richard P. Tucker, eds.
Duke University Press, 1991
Changing Tropical Forests begins with an overview of the history of deforestation in tropical America and the tasks facing Latin American environmental historians. Based on proceedings of a 1991 conference sponsored by the Forest History Society and IUFRO Forest History Group in Costa Rica, the contributors offer detailed accounts of the enivornmental history of specific forest conditions, grasslands, and changing ecosystems of Costa Rica, Mexico, Surinam, and Brazil. the role of human intervention in this process of change is also discussed.
Contributors. William Balée, James R. Barborak, Peter Boomgaard, Larissa V. Brown, Gerardo Budowski, John Dargavel, Warren Dean, Silvia del Amo R., Elizabeth Graham, J. Régis Guillaumon, Rhena Hoffmann, Sally P. Horn, Sebastião Kengen, Herman W. Konrad, Mary Pamela Lehmann, Robert D. Leier, Murdo J. MacLeod, M. Patricia Marchak, Elinor G. K. Melville, David M. Pendergast, Susan M. Pierce, Leslie E. Sponsel, Richard P. Tucker, Terry West
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Colonial Transactions
Imaginaries, Bodies, and Histories in GabonFlorence Bernault
Duke University Press, 2019
In Colonial Transactions Florence Bernault moves beyond the racial divide that dominates colonial studies of Africa. Instead, she illuminates the strange and frightening imaginaries that colonizers and colonized shared on the ground. Bernault looks at Gabon from the late nineteenth century to the present, historicizing the most vivid imaginations and modes of power in Africa today: French obsessions with cannibals, the emergence of vampires and witches in the Gabonese imaginary, and the use of human organs for fetishes. Struggling over objects, bodies, agency, and values, colonizers and colonized entered relations that are better conceptualized as "transactions." Together they also shared an awareness of how the colonial situation broke down moral orders and forced people to use the evil side of power. This foreshadowed the ways in which people exercise agency in contemporary Africa, as well as the proliferation of magical fears and witchcraft anxieties in present-day Gabon. Overturning theories of colonial and postcolonial nativism, this book is essential reading for historians and anthropologists of witchcraft, power, value, and the body.
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Congo Style
From Belgian Art Nouveau to African IndependenceRuth Sacks
University of Michigan Press, 2023
Congo Style presents a postcolonial approach to discussing the visual culture of two now-notorious regimes: King Leopold II’s Congo Colony and the state sites of Mobutu Sese Seko’s totalitarian Zaïre. Readers are brought into the living remains of sites once made up of ambitious modernist architecture and art in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the total artworks of Art Nouveau to the aggrandizing sites of post-independence Kinshasa, Congo Style investigates the experiential qualities of man-made environments intended to entertain, delight, seduce, and impress.
In her study of visual culture, Ruth Sacks sets out to reinstate the compelling wonder of nationalist architecture from Kinshasa’s post-independence era, such as the Tower of the Exchange (1974), Gécamines Tower (1977), and the artworks and exhibitions that accompanied them. While exploring post-independence nation-building, this book examines how the underlying ideology of Belgian Art Nouveau, a celebrated movement in Belgium, led to the dominating early colonial settler buildings of the ABC Hotels (circa 1908–13). Congo Style combines Sacks’s practice as a visual artist and her academic scholarship to provide an original study of early colonial and independence-era modernist sites in their African context.[more]
Congo's Dancers
Women and Work in KinshasaLesley Nicole Braun
University of Wisconsin Press, 2023
Dance music plays a central role in the cultural, social, religious, and family lives of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among the various genres popular in the capital city of Kinshasa, Congolese rumba occupies a special place and can be counted as one of the DRC’s most well-known cultural exports. The public image of rumba was historically dominated by male bandleaders, singers, and musicians. However, with the introduction of the danseuse (professional concert dancer) in the late 1970s, the role of women as cultural, moral, and economic actors came into public prominence and helped further raise Congolese rumba’s international profile.
In Congo’s Dancers, Lesley Nicole Braun uses the prism of the Congolese danseuse to examine the politics of control and the ways in which notions of visibility, virtue, and socio-economic opportunity are interlinked in this urban African context. The work of the danseuse highlights the fact that public visibility is necessary to build the social networks required for economic independence, even as this visibility invites social opprobrium for women. The concert dancer therefore exemplifies many of the challenges that women face in Kinshasa as they navigate the public sphere, and she illustrates the gendered differences of local patronage politics that shape public morality. As an ethnographer, Braun had unusual access to the world she documents, having been invited to participate as a concert dancer herself.
In Congo’s Dancers, Lesley Nicole Braun uses the prism of the Congolese danseuse to examine the politics of control and the ways in which notions of visibility, virtue, and socio-economic opportunity are interlinked in this urban African context. The work of the danseuse highlights the fact that public visibility is necessary to build the social networks required for economic independence, even as this visibility invites social opprobrium for women. The concert dancer therefore exemplifies many of the challenges that women face in Kinshasa as they navigate the public sphere, and she illustrates the gendered differences of local patronage politics that shape public morality. As an ethnographer, Braun had unusual access to the world she documents, having been invited to participate as a concert dancer herself.
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Court of Remorse
Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for RwandaThierry Cruvellier
University of Wisconsin Press, 2010
When genocidal violence gripped Rwanda in 1994, the international community recoiled, hastily withdrawing its peacekeepers. Late that year, in an effort to redeem itself, the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to seek accountability for some of the worst atrocities since World War II: the genocide suffered by the Tutsi and crimes against humanity suffered by the Hutu. But faced with competing claims, the prosecution focused exclusively on the crimes of Hutu extremists. No charges would be brought against the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, which ultimately won control of the country. The UN, as if racked by guilt for its past inaction, gave in to pressure by Rwanda’s new leadership. With the Hutu effectively silenced, and the RPF constantly reminding the international community of its failure to protect the Tutsi during the war, the Tribunal pursued an unusual form of one-sided justice, born out of contrition.
Fascinated by the Tribunal’s rich complexities, journalist Thierry Cruvellier came back day after day to watch the proceedings, spending more time there than any other outside observer. Gradually he gained the confidence of the victims, defendants, lawyers, and judges. Drawing on interviews with these protagonists and his close observations of their interactions, Cruvellier takes readers inside the courtroom to witness the motivations, mechanisms, and manipulations of justice as it unfolded on the stage of high-stakes, global politics. It is this ground-level view that makes his account so valuable—and so absorbing. A must-read for those who want to understand the dynamics of international criminal tribunals, Court of Remorse reveals both the possibilities and the challenges of prosecuting human rights violations.
Fascinated by the Tribunal’s rich complexities, journalist Thierry Cruvellier came back day after day to watch the proceedings, spending more time there than any other outside observer. Gradually he gained the confidence of the victims, defendants, lawyers, and judges. Drawing on interviews with these protagonists and his close observations of their interactions, Cruvellier takes readers inside the courtroom to witness the motivations, mechanisms, and manipulations of justice as it unfolded on the stage of high-stakes, global politics. It is this ground-level view that makes his account so valuable—and so absorbing. A must-read for those who want to understand the dynamics of international criminal tribunals, Court of Remorse reveals both the possibilities and the challenges of prosecuting human rights violations.
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association for School Libraries and the Public Library Association
Best Books for High Schools, selected by the American Association for School Libraries
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