"Atlantic Childhoods, Global Contexts" in special issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, 11 (4)
This article is an introduction to the special issue dedicated to exploring the ways in which childhood and youth have been shaped by Atlantic and global dynamics. It explores some of the methodological and theoretical challenges of writing a history of childhood and youth in the Global South. The authors suggest that current theories which address […]
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD: Next Stop, Toronto!
A richly illustrated book, examines the urban connection of the clandestine system of secret routes, safe houses and "conductors." Not only does it trace the story of the Underground Railroad itself and how people courageously made the trip north to Canada and freedom, but it also explores what happened to them after they arrived. And […]
The Hanging Of Angelique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal
Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death. In a powerful retelling of Angélique’s story -- now supported by archival illustrations -- Cooper builds on […]
My Name Is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom
This is the remarkable story of Phillis Wheatley, who is born into an African family of griots, or storytellers, but captured by slave raiders and forced aboard a slave ship, where appalling conditions spell death for many of her companions. Numerous sharks follow the ship, feeding on the corpses of slaves thrown overboard. Weakened by […]
Black Matters
Halifax’s former Poet Laureate Afua Cooper and photographer Wilfried Raussert collaborate in this book of poems and photographs focused on everyday Black experiences. The result is a jambalaya — a dialogue between image and text. Cooper translates Raussert’s photos into poetry, painting a profound image of what disembodied historical facts might look like when they […]
A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland
As the major gateway into British North America for travelers on the Underground Railroad, the U.S./Canadian border along the Detroit River was a boundary that determined whether thousands of enslaved people of African descent could reach a place of freedom and opportunity. In A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit […]
"Stan Douglas and the Aesthetic Critique of Urban Decline" in Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, 3 (1), 8-21
Over the past two decades, Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas has produced an evolving body of photographic, slide projection and sound, and film and video installation projects. From nascent large-scale panoramic landscape photographs to intellectually probing multimedia narratives on urbanism's transformations, his works persistently excavate the social, political, and epistemological arbitrariness of modernity's claim to progress. […]
The Reverend's Apprentice
A powerful, tragicomic novel about power, culture, and identity politics in contemporary America, as seen through the eyes of an African student. Jonah Ayot is a graduate student from a fictional central African nation, studying in a fictional American city some time after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003; the novel mirrors Jonah’s own […]
Smells Like Stars
Kerstin Ostheim, a journalist, and P. J. Banner, a freelance photographer, have been together six months after meeting on a dating website. They are getting married in two weeks and as the wedding fast approaches, they question their compatibility while investigating mysterious horse killings that are taking place in Ogweyo's Cove, the Pacific tourist haven […]