Contemporary African Screen Worlds

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Edited by Lindiwe Dovey, Añulika Agina and Michael W. Thomas

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > Africa

Keywords

Africa, sociology, digital

Publishing date

2025 (April 01, 2025)

Publisher

Duke University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 384 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4780-2820-8

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Book Presentation:
Contemporary African Screen Worlds brings together a new generation of African screen media scholars who explore and theorize the dynamic, interactive screen worlds that have arisen in contemporary Africa due to dramatic global changes in technology. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, extensive interviews, and specific case studies, the contributors bring to life the complex materialities and entanglements of film spectatorship, fandom, production, and circulation in Africa. They particularly attend to the interfaces among film audiences, actors, makers, platforms, and screens both small and large. Engaging with more than a dozen national contexts across the continent, the book reveals the diversity of African screen media practices and the creativity and agency of the people who passionately generate them, from film craftworkers in Nigeria and film students in Ghana to film fans in Rwanda and Burkina Faso. By focusing on the work of powerful platforms (such as Netflix and MTVShuga) and ordinary people (such as domestic workers watching Nollywood films in rural Kenya), this volume grapples with the effects and affects of digitization, mobile screens, media convergence, and the televisual turn in Africa.

Contributors. Moradewun Adejunmobi, A ulika Agina, Alexander Bud, Lindiwe Dovey, Femi Eromosele, Pier Paolo Frassinelli, Alexandra Grieve, Jonathan Haynes, Joe Jackson, Alessandro Jedlowski, Dennis-Brook Prince Lotsu, Alison MacAulay, Elastus Mambwe, Asteway M. Woldemichael, Nedine Moonsamy, Elizabeth Olayiwola, Temitayo Olofinlua, Rashida Resario, Estrella Sendra, Robin Steedman, Michael W. Thomas, Stefanie Van de Peer, Solomon Waliaula.

About the authors:
Lindiwe Dovey is Professor of Film and Screen Studies, SOAS University of London. Añulika Agina is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the Pan-Atlantic University Lagos. Michael W. Thomas is Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies, SOAS University of London.

Press Reviews:
"Through the evocative concept of screen worlds, this exciting volume models an ethical, reflexive approach to undertaking African studies with resources from the global North. The result is an original volume that centers Africa and the experiences of Africans in their relationships to screen worlds. Ambitiously laying out the fascinating dimensions of film practices across the continent, the volume foregrounds the agency of Africans, who appear strongly as participants in rapidly changing screen worlds that exploit the affordances of new media." - Cajetan Iheka, author of African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics

"Contemporary African Screen Worlds is a highly engaging and cutting-edge collection that offers a snapshot in a dynamic slide show about changing technologies and screen worlds across the continent. Toggling back between the global and the local while focusing as much on global platforms like Netflix as it does on practices of domestic workers watching Nollywood films in Kenya, this volume carefully attends to the messy and contradictory ways people engage with all types of screens." - Lindsey B. Green-Simms, author of Queer African Cinemas

See the publisher website: Duke University Press