Teaching Anglophone African Film
Anglophone African films, especially Nigerian ones, are watched across Africa, the Caribbean, the United States, and other parts of the world and streamed on Netflix and other Internet platforms. Today, anglophone African film has grown in spread, cast, production, and sophistication; in the age of the Internet, with its ease of access to media content, it has achieved world-renowned publishing capacity, similar to Bollywood. A few studies on African film were carried out during the inchoate stage of Nigeria’s Nollywood, the region’s biggest film industry, but not much has been done on anglophone African film and its potential for the classroom today. There is therefore a need for an in-depth study that will update the understanding of this phenomenon for scholars and present its materials in a pedagogical format to students globally. More than dealing with disparate aspects of the anglophone African film in works sprinkled over three decades, when Nollywood took the shine off film in Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, and other countries, Teaching Anglophone African Film will offer a wider coverage of the film phenomenon in the English-speaking parts of Africa. It will also trace the history and development of the (anglophone) African film in a systematic fashion, describe ignored aspects of anglophone African film, and incorporate a section of useful resources in a composite manner for students, teachers, and scholars in African studies—one of the fastest growing disciplines in universities across the world. The editor believes exploring this urgent area of scholarship is long overdue.
The following themes are suggested for the book:
- history of mise-en-scène in anglophone African film
- foreign media and anglophone African film
- pop culture and film in anglophone Africa
- censorship and state intervention
- the old versus the new: machines, cameras, equipment, and computers
- educational films and disease in Africa
- film genres, modes, and media
- the African film and contemporary or historical events
- rethinking or revisiting earlier studies on Nollywood or anglophone African film
- cinema, film, television, and literature
- orality, culture, history, and the anglophone film
- class, gendered subjects, and multiethnic identities
- migration and the diaspora in anglophone African film
- video and journalistic filming in colonial times
- animation, documentary, and the African film
- conceptualizing or theorizing contemporary anglophone African film
- auteurs, directors, and contemporary anglophone African film
- plot, memories, characterization, and modern vices
- Nollywood influence and criticisms
- globalization, digital ecology, and film in anglophone Africa
- the forbidden: ellipsis and cutouts
- anglophone African film, skits, and social media
- children’s films and growing up
For Teaching Anglophone African Film, the editor solicits contributions that focus on the above themes or other similar themes and on anglophone African film in the last three decades or more. Contributors are encouraged to draw their data from specific nations or regions. Interdisciplinary perspectives and approaches are welcome. Manuscripts should be tailored to students’ needs and should draw on surface or deep learning, public pedagogy, critical pedagogy, historical literacy, and other pedagogy-related concepts. Abstracts (up to 300 words in length) should be sent to the volume editor, Ignatius Chukwumah, at ignatiusc@fuwukari.edu.ng by 30 November 2023. Abstract submissions will be acknowledged within forty-eight hours. Manuscripts developed from approved abstracts, with a focus on any aspect of anglophone African film, should not exceed 3,500 words and must conform to MLA style. Articles must be the authors’ original work and cannot be under consideration with another journal at the time of submission.