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The heroic legends described here recreate the events and annals of the kingdom of Segu and of the Bambara tribe that formed a series of important city-states along the Niger River during the 17th century.

By analyzing African and Caribbean texts on their own terms, Horizontal Comparison articulates new forms of transoceanic solidarity.

The fields of comparative literature and Black Atlantic studies have an Africa problem: despite sustained attempts to decenter Western paradigms, they still privilege the United States and Europe as the primary loci of reference. So argues Cajetan Iheka in Horizontal Comparison, which aims to redirect both fields toward a non-hierarchical, South-South orientation focusing on the links between Africa and the Caribbean. 

By analyzing the literary work and real-life trajectories of writers such as Peter Abrahams, Chimamanda Adichie, Maryse Condé, Buchi Emecheta, Jamaica Kincaid, Claude McKay, Dinaw Mengestu, Ferdinand Oyono, Taiye Selasi, and Sam Selvon, Iheka draws our attention to the ways in which African and Caribbean texts inform and mutually constitute each other, bypassing the usual comparisons to Western literary canons. The book challenges not only Western cultural hegemony in the study of global Black writing but also the very methodologies of comparative literary studies, offering fresh insights into reading, trauma, character, and the “worlding” of literature.

Against the backdrop of media representations of Africa through persistent and pervasive images of emaciated, starving Africans and the critical need to marshall food aid in response, Hungry Subjects places Africa’s food anxiety within a broader historical context and expands ongoing food scholarship beyond its current confines in the social sciences. Njeri Githire weaves together coming-of-age texts across the African and African diasporic literary landscape in English, French, and Portuguese expression to ask how African writers incorporate food into their storylines to transmit cultural information, question norms, and propose alternatives. Eating is an intimately personal yet inherently social experience codified by public rituals and commerce, invariably linked to a larger tapestry of historical, cultural, economic, and political dynamics. Delving into the political dynamics of food as a tool of power and control alongside subversive potentialities, Hungry Subjects appraises the narrative and political thrust of (not-)eating and exposes the ways in which postcolonial manifestations of colonial-era power relations are symbolized in food’s many functions and meanings. 

Since 2006, the United Nations and Cambodian Government have participated in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a hybrid tribunal created to try key Khmer Rouge officials for crimes of the Pol Pot era. In Hybrid Justice, John D. Ciorciari and Anne Heindel examine the contentious politics behind the tribunal’s creation, its flawed legal and institutional design, and the frequent politicized impasses that have undermined its ability to deliver credible and efficient justice and leave a positive legacy. They also draw lessons and principles for future hybrid and international courts and proceedings.

Since 2006, the United Nations and Cambodian Government have participated in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a hybrid tribunal created to try key Khmer Rouge officials for crimes of the Pol Pot era. In Hybrid Justice, John D. Ciorciari and Anne Heindel examine the contentious politics behind the tribunal’s creation, its flawed legal and institutional design, and the frequent politicized impasses that have undermined its ability to deliver credible and efficient justice and leave a positive legacy. They also draw lessons and principles for future hybrid and international courts and proceedings.