Abstract This chapter canvases a selection of texts to frame what we might call ancient tourist literature. Odysseus’ ten-year return journey from Troy to Ithaca was involuntary, so that makes Homer’s Odyssey a poor candidate for antiquity’s tourist literature. While Herodotus’ Histories is well known for its author’s fascination with Egypt, less familiar texts help build out the picture: for example, the literary graffiti of Julia Balbilla, an aristocrat from Asia Minor, whose visit continues to be physically marked at the Colossi of Memnon near Thebes. Texts of this kind are, the author argues, the key to a mostly implicit ancient conception of tourism: while many journeys are famously recounted in epic and other genres, only a few are presented with a sense that they might potentially be emulated. An important element here is the Mediterranean landscape that emerges in key Greek and Latin geographical texts. Most notably, Pausanias in his Description of Greece richly bespeaks a notion of cultural landscape, at least with respect to the Greek mainland. With the ascendancy of Christianity in the early fourteenth century CE, the influential concept of a Holy Land emerged. While religion and tourism may seem odd bedfellows today, they show significant overlap in many early texts. Ancient tourism and its literature are characterized as the experience of particular landscapes. At issue are the literary genres by which those experiences become part of the collective memory of ancient societies and would also exert influence over subsequent readers.

Abstract This article argues that the group of paintings entitled Your Trip to Africa, by US-based Botswanan visual artist Meleko Mokgosi, advocate for a clearer, more realistic encounter with Africa and its people. The paintings, motivated by Peter Kubelka’s 1966 experimental film documenting a hunting party in Sudan (Our Trip to Africa), admonish the viewer to pay attention not just to what they see but to how they see. This admonition is an important reminder for African historians as well. We should beware of the pitfalls of writing the history of Africa through a racialized discourse, fashioned in the West, that ignores or distorts experiences and subjectivities of the dark-skinned Africans that, necessarily, precede any racialized discourse. Just as important, Mokgosi reminds us that in representing African history we should be wary of essentializing or aestheticizing Africans to confirm our preconceived notions of their lives and histories: Africans should not be made instruments to serve historical narratives that reinforce our own ways of looking. Ultimately, Mokgosi’s paintings remind us of the artifice underlying any effort to portray the reality of Africans, and their history.

ABSTRACT April 2015, Burundi. What started as peaceful demonstrations against another term of president Nkurunziza, quickly turned into violent confrontations between mostly young male civilians and government forces. The demonstrations signalled the beginning of a new political crisis after a decade of peace. In this paper, we draw on eye-witness accounts of civilians to understand the escalation of violence. We argue that legacies of conflict informed the understanding and escalation of the violence. For instance, memories and skills learned by adults and older peers during the civil war were passed on to novices to organise protests and neighbourhood defence. Yet the legacies of conflict also juxtaposed with protesters’ ideals on ‘civil’ non-violent political dialogue. The ambivalence towards violence experienced and narrated by protesters and witnesses points to intergenerational change, but may also be understood as contradictions in how political dialogue and competition is generally envisioned in Burundi.

L'hymne est un symbole patrimonial fort significatif traduisant l'unité du genre humain, hommes et femmes, par la joie de vivre, l'amour et la richesse d'une nature offerte par Dieu. Il est porteur d'un idéal de liberté concrétisé par l'accès à souveraineté, les hymnes des pays d'Afrique francophone résultent d'un processus de création qui met en lumière des images souvent oubliées de l’histoire des pays fortement diminuée par le leg colonial. Le présent travail de recherche intitulé hymnes nationales en langues nationales et promotion des vertus éthiques pour un vivre ensemble serein » porte sur la modernisation systémique de là cette dernière, notamment dans le domaine spécifique, celui de la langue et du numérique. En effet, le problème que ce sujet pose est celui du développement, de l'optimisation de la diffusion des savoirs précieux dont regorge la langue à travers les chansons populaires de ralliement. Dans ce travail, nous présentons d'abord ce qu'est la promotion d'une langue, ensuite nous nous intéressons à quelques sites œuvrant dans la promotion des langues nationales et enfin, nous analysons ces sites afin de relever les manquements et proposer un exemple de page web pour une promotion efficace de celles-ci. Pour traiter ce sujet nous avons fait appel à des méthodes et à des approches telles que la sociolinguistique et l'entretien. Il ressort de nos investigations que la langue est un élément indispensable pour la transmission des savoirs culturels et par ricochet une reconnaissance identitaire d'une culture spécifique. En plus, internet est un moyen pour promouvoir et pour sauvegarder cette identité culturelle.

Abstract This chapter examines the Lowland East Cushitic language of the Afroasiatic phylum spoken in southwest Ethiopia: Konso. It emphasizes that the Konso call themselves Xonsitta and their language Afaa Xonso. The chapter also displays the four dialects of Konso: Faashe, Karatte, Tuuro, and Xolme. The Konso are organized in nine exogamous clans, each with their own chief. They are predominantly farmers who are known for their indigenous terracing system. This chapter also stresses that the majority of the Konso people are monolingual. It then investigates the rate of bilingualism in Konso and Amharic, and argues that monolingualism in Amharic in the Konso zonal town of Karatte is beginning to show up among children born of native Konso. Ultimately, this chapter details the early studies of Konso phonology and morphology. It also looks at the Konso syntax, grammar, and ideophones.

Abstract This chapter introduces the expanse of the Nilo-Saharan region, the language family that spread across Central and Eastern Africa. It lists the range of languages and language groups within the region such as Kunama, Eastern Sudanic, Nara, Berta, Nilotic, and Surmic. The geographical spread probably reflects the chronological and historical diffusion of the ancestral languages from the west. The chapter also notes how scholars often argue the specificity of groups and subgroups included within the Nilo-Saharan phylum, as well as their genetic grouping.