Category Archives: Africa

That’s So Funny I Forgot to Laugh

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Timothy Burke

In the middle of a New York Times story on corruption in the World Food Program’s aid to Somalia, there’s this gem: “We have to tell these folks that you cannot go on like this — we know what you … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Good Quote, Bad Quote, Politics | Comments Off

Disposed to Propose

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Timothy Burke

I’ve done a fair bit of judging proposals for grants over the years, and a recent experience doing so pushed me to finally assemble some notes and thoughts I’ve been collecting. These are specific to undergraduates: graduate and faculty proposals … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Politics | 2 Comments

District 9

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Watching District 9, I could feel my mind splitting into different tracks of internal dialogue and reaction. The first track was simply taking pleasure in the film’s deft mixture of intelligence and high-octane action in a science-fiction idiom. Even potentially … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Popular Culture | 13 Comments

Obama in Ghana

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I joined in a conversation in Second Life about Obama’s speech in Ghana over the weekend. Due to some technical snafus, I had trouble participating in the panel early on, so one of the basic reactions I had to the … Continue reading →

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The Implausibility of Liberal Revolution

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I’ve been struck in the past week at some of the similarities between Iran and Zimbabwe. Yes, there are vast differences in geopolitical status, economic health, histories of 20th Century statehood, religious and social ideology and much else besides. But … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Politics | 2 Comments

The Usefulness of Scholarship

Posted on June 13, 2009 by Timothy Burke

If you define erudition as encyclopedic knowledge about a body of discrete facts, then welcome to the age of distributed erudition. It’s still a very good thing to have those facts in your head rather than to pop up on … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 5 Comments

Colonial Africa: A List of Questions

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I think I’ve hit on a catchy structure for a modest reshuffling of my Honors seminar in Colonial Africa. Much of my reading list will remain the same, but this restructuring is designed to make the way I look at … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 9 Comments

Gordon Brown and Omar Bongo

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Timothy Burke

About the only thing I can say about Omar Bongo being dead is, “I hope it hurt a bit”. You can’t even say, “Thank goodness that’s over”, because his death won’t change much if anything about the way that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Politics | 5 Comments

Ponies Can Be Allocated Directly

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Greg Mills and Jeffrey Herbst argue that it’s time to resume aid to Zimbabwe to help out the unity government. The problem here is that while almost everyone would like to help Morgan Tsvangirai and his allies “soft-land” the Zimbabwean … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 3 Comments

What’s Distinctive About Africanist Historiography?

Posted on May 20, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Swarthmore has an elaborate system of Honors seminars. The basic premise of the system is that third and fourth year students participating in the system take four small, intensely focused double-credit seminars, three in a major subject, one in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Swarthmore | 6 Comments