confluence2
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« on: May 09, 2008, 06:41:32 PM » |
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Have any historians, or anyone else for that matter, used this book? If so, I am curious how it went. I enjoyed it and am thinking of assigning it, even though it was written by a journalist and synthesizes previous research.
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« Last Edit: May 09, 2008, 06:44:18 PM by confluence2 »
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spork
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« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2008, 10:02:33 PM » |
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Philip Gourevitch's book on Rwanda, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, is much better written. So is What Is the What? by Dave Eggers.
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a.k.a. gum-chewing monkey in a Tufts University jacket
"Please do not force people who are exhausted to take medication for hallucinations." -- Memo from the Chair, Department of White Privilege Studies, Fiork University
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genespleen2
Please don't stare at my
Distinguished Senior Member
Posts: 1,081
That's a big chicken.
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« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2008, 10:36:42 PM » |
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What level class would you be assigning it to? What is the class itself? We need a bit more on your end to really offer useful responses.
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Chilluns is our future. Bugger.
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grasshopper
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« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2008, 01:26:30 PM » |
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Depends how you're using it, in which discipline, and for what kind of class.
I think it would be an interesting pivot point to discuss theory/methodology in a history course, or representations of Other in a gender studies/postcolonial theories course.
I've never used it, but I've used other non-academic texts in these ways, and it's always worked. But then, I've used them as objects of study, not sources of information.
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ploughandstars
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« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2008, 08:37:47 PM » |
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For a more contemporary take on Africa you should look at:
The Zanzibar Chest
and most certainly,
When A Crocodile Eats The Sun
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hmaria1609
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« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2008, 02:20:31 PM » |
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I read this book in my senior year of college. The (elective) history class I took was open to upperclassmen. In my case, I was taking it as an elective for my history major.
I thought it was good. Plus you get the background story to The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
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bewildered
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« Reply #7 on: May 28, 2008, 10:06:20 AM » |
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What about Caroline Elkins book from a couple of years back? On Kenya, dontcha know. I did indeed find King L.'s G. effective (and cool pics of the missing hands and striped buttocks-- that got the students going), but my students wanted to know: who really cares about Belgium? Aside from Newt Geen-gritch, whose PhD thesis argued that the Belgians Really Cared and sadly left the incompetent Congolese to their own devices in 1960 (okay, maybe I don't have that exactly right, but close).
Gourevitch's book is good, but my students wanted to know why they couldn't just watch Hotel Rwanda and be done with it. So it really depends on your audience.
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gosox
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« Reply #8 on: June 02, 2008, 02:10:11 PM » |
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Accessibility is a huge issue for readings for African history courses. Books like King Leopold's can be great (and you should all track down the Historically Speaking issue with Hochschild talking about "practicing history without a license" with the response of more than a dozen prominent historians.
What is the What is, I'm sorry, execrable, especially for classrom use. At least expose them to actual history rather than fictionalized dross. See the New Republic review of that book for a suitable evisceration.
My favorite of these sorts of books is Bill Berkeley's "The Graves ASre Not Yet Full." It covers a broad swath of Africa, is marvelously written, has an argument, and can be used throughout a course on modern Africa if you do not want them to absorb it all in one sitting.
My work is on race and politics in the US and sub-Saharan, and especially southern, Africa, and one of the vexing issues (which likely comes down to sales) is the relative inaccessibility -- but sometimes almost prideful inaccessibility -- of so much African work.MyKingdom for a narrative historian. (Speaking of which, Martin Meredith has also been on a roll of late. And my students did like Elkins as well.)
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spork
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« Reply #9 on: June 09, 2008, 05:00:28 AM » |
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If What is The What isn't history, then neither is King Leopold's Ghost. And I can think of nothing more inexecrable than the inaccessible.
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a.k.a. gum-chewing monkey in a Tufts University jacket
"Please do not force people who are exhausted to take medication for hallucinations." -- Memo from the Chair, Department of White Privilege Studies, Fiork University
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grasshopper
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« Reply #10 on: June 09, 2008, 08:54:31 AM » |
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What I don't understand is how a book about the history of an entirely different country, or a broad sweeping history of an entire continent, can be suggested as a substitute?
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marlborough
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« Reply #11 on: June 09, 2008, 12:15:00 PM » |
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I used King Leopold for a discussion day in my 19th Century Europe book--they needed a vivid, synthetic understanding of the Scramble for Africa in order to catch the European end of it (the 1882 Berlin Conference, Germany/Bismarck's views on foreign power, the U.S. meddling in 1882, why everyone came to dislike the Belgians--and how that figures into WWI planning, the power of the missionary lobby, etc.). Many of them had read Heart of Darkness in High School, so we had a useful point of contact.
For that purpose, it worked very well, we had a bang-up discussion and some of the students sought out Hochschild's other popular works.
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