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

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 […]

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An Obscure Afro-Brazilian “Colony” in Ghana: Accra’s Tabon Community

By Hermann W. von Hesse In the summer of 2017, I returned from Madison, Wisconsin to Accra – my hometown and Ghana’s capital since 1877 – to do my pre-dissertation research. Besides my main dissertation interests, I had since childhood been interested in the music and religion of Accra’s Afro-Brazilian descended community. Though not of […]

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Accra, an Archive of Mobility: A Bibliography of the West African Metropolis

Movement, both unfettered and brutally curtailed, has long been central to Accra’s urban culture. From its days as a slave entrepot, through its decades as a colonial possession, well into its car-driven post-independence boom years, Accra has always been defined by movement–of the enslaved, by colonial administrators, of goods, and of postcolonial citizens. Take for […]

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