Where to Start? An Urban History of the Bight of Biafra

October 17, 2024.Reading time 12 minutes.

The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. By Joseph Godlewski I was trained to be suspicious of origins. The search for metaphysical starting points has always seemed haunted by romantic essentialist beliefs and fraught with […]

Member of the Week: Constanze Weise

February 25, 2020.Reading time 13 minutes.

Constanze Weise Department of Social Sciences Henderson State University Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? Presently, I am working on two book manuscripts. I am currently finishing up the manuscript for my first book which is based on my doctoral dissertation. Tentatively titled Kingdoms of the Confluence: Ritual, Politics, and Sovereignty […]

Transnational Boundary Crossing in Fictional Lagos

April 25, 2019.Reading time 26 minutes.

In 2018, the website Ozy famously crowned Nigerian Americans as the most successful ethnic group in the United States. Nearly 30 percent of Nigerian Americans over the age of 25 held graduate degrees—almost three times the overall average within the general U.S. population. “Among Nigerian-American professionals, 45 percent work in education services … many are […]

Reimagining Slavery and Freedom: Afro-Brazilians in Lagos during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

April 15, 2019.Reading time 18 minutes.

By Susan A.C. Rosenfeld During the second half of the nineteenth century, Lagos became an increasingly diverse, urban node on the Atlantic circuit, where slavery and freedom defined individual identities and shaped the city itself. A series of political and economic transformations contributed to the social dynamics of Lagos. The nineteenth-century transition from the trans-Atlantic […]