Working with History

2017 saw the APC move from the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics (AXL) to a new home in the History department. Current developments in the History department  - in critical approaches to archive, in the study of the African past before European colonialism, and in the investigation of vernacular concepts  - undergird the move.  In 2018, the APC will  be  participating in the History Department’s  exciting new project, History Access.

The APC inaugurates a special focus every few years. Previous foci have  been on visual archives, sonic archives, material archives, archives and the spectral, ethnographic collections, archival ethnographies, archival biographies, and archives of affect. In 2018, we will continue with our current concentration on the African past before European colonialism, and will inaugurate a new focus on discourse, including, amongst other things, vernacular concepts, multi-directional translation, poetics and opaque expressions.