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African Documentary Cinema investigates the inception and trajectory of contemporary documentary filmmaking in sub-Saharan African countries and their diasporas. The book challenges critical paradigms that have long prevailed in African film criticism, shedding light on the diverse discourses and evolving aesthetic trends present within documentary films.Situating his analysis within the context of the significant transformation of the African film industry, the author focuses on the development, diversity, and shifting dynamics that have impacted contemporary documentary cinema. Examining the historical, political, sociological, economic, and cultural factors that have facilitated the rise of documentary films—especially those created by female documentarians—the book assesses the emergence of documentary filmmakers spanning different generations. Their training, practices, and innovative perspectives on social, political, and environmental issues ultimately give rise to new frameworks for understanding the bio-documentary genre, issues of gender discrimination, LGBTQIA+ identities, environmental trauma, genocide, and memory on the African continent.This ground-breaking study offers new insight into a rapidly expanding topic and will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of film studies, documentary film, media industry studies, African studies, French, postcolonial studies, politics, and cultural studies.

The first book-length study of Nairobi-based female filmmakers—and how their dogged pursuit of opportunities, innovation, and cultural support is defining an industry.Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is home to something extraordinary and unlikely: in this city, the most critically acclaimed filmmakers—both directors and producers—are women. Yet, across the globe, women make up less than 10 percent of film directors. In Creative Hustling, Robin Steedman takes a closer look at these remarkable women filmmakers, viewing them not only as auteurs, but also as entrepreneurs, who are taking the lead in creating a vibrant, and atypical, screen media industry. To understand their achievement, Steedman theorizes hustling as not only a practice born out of necessity but also an inventive labor in its own right—one that can create new spaces of community by carving new entrepreneurial pathways.Through original empirical field research gathered over eight months in Nairobi, Steedman describes how female filmmakers go about trying to create their films, as well as the challenges they face in distributing those films in their local market. Along the way, she traces the history of the industry over the last fifteen years, the lack of state support for these filmmakers'undertakings, the low social standing of the profession, and the transnational conflicts that arise when Euro-American funding is at the heart of Kenyan cinema.Creative Hustling is a major contribution to the task of de-Westernizing media industry studies, imparting important lessons about what it takes to create and distribute creative work in a global age increasingly marked by uncertain work.

This edited book brings together scholarly chapters on linguistic aspects of humour in literary and non-literary domains and contexts in different parts of the world. Previous scholarly engagements and theoretical postulations on humour and the comic provide veritable resources for reexamining the relationship between linguistic elements and comic sensations on the one hand, and the validity of interpretive humour stylistics on the other hand. Renowned Stylistics scholars, such as Michael Toolan, who writes the volume's foreword against the backdrop of nearly four decades of scholarly engagement with stylistics, and Katie Wales, who in this volume engages with Charles Dickens, one of the most eminent satirists in English literature, as well as many other European and African authors who have worked ceaselessly in the area of humour and language, weigh in on the topic of language and humour in this volume. Together, they provide a variety of interesting perspectives on the topic, deploying different textual sources from different media and from different regions of the world. Part of the book's offering includes integrative stylistic approaches to humour in African, European and American written texts, examinations of social media and political humour in Nigeria, Cameroon and Zimbabwe, pragmatics and humorous stance-taking, incongruity as comedy in works of fiction, and a unified levels of linguistic analysis approach to the investigation of humour. This book will be of interest to academics and students of Linguistics, Stylistics, Communications and Media Studies, and Humour Studies. Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria

Since Pauline Konga's breakthrough performance at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, the world has become accustomed to seeing Kenyan women medal at major championships, sweep marathons, and set world records. Yet little is known about the pioneer generation of women who paved the way for Kenya's reputation as an international powerhouse in women's track and field. In Kenya's Running Women: A History, historian and former professional runner Michelle M. Sikes details the triumphs and many challenges these women faced, from the advent of Kenya's athletics program in the colonial era through the professionalization of running in the 1980s and 1990s. Sikes reveals how over time running became a vehicle for Kenyan women to expand the boundaries of acceptable female behavior. Kenya's Running Women demonstrates the necessity of including women in histories of African sport, and of incorporating sport into studies of African gender and nation-building.