College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item TRANSATLANTIC DISBELONGINGS: LOCATING LIBERATORY WORLDMAKING PRACTICES IN NIGERIAN DIASPORIC WOMEN’S ART(2018) Akinbola, Patricia; Sies, Mary Cobin; Ater, Renée; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Transatlantic Disbelongings: Locating Liberatory Worldmaking Practices in Nigerian Diasporic Women’s Art” examines how women artists of the Nigerian diaspora use contemporary visual art, performance, film, and literature to contest and redefine their familial, cultural, and national belonging in Nigeria and its diasporas. Foregrounding the work of five women artists: Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Zina Saro-Wiwa, ruby onyinyechi amanze, and Nnedi Okorafor, who straddle multiple geographies, identities, and allegiances, this project analyzes how they resist popular understandings of what has been deemed proper conduct for women in Nigeria and its diaspora—a process I call “disbelonging.” My use of disbelonging refers to the process by which female diasporic artists embrace and employ anti-respectability and queerness to recode, remix, and resist oppressive colonial legacies surrounding gender, sexuality, and national belonging in a Nigerian context. Their works depict visual and literary landscapes where women move freely through time and space, engage playfully with one another, prioritize their own desires, and unapologetically embody contradiction and taboo. This dissertation argues that their artmaking is worldmaking, which creates opportunities to reconfigure understandings of transnational flows and unsettles oppressive conceptualizations of community and family to embrace a range of affiliational tensions.Item From West Africa to America(2014-05) Adeniji, Olufunke A.Since the late 1960s, there has been a rise in immigrants coming to the United States. Many Africans, particularly, Nigerians have been a part of the migration. In this Oral History Interview, there were three main themes that were presented. The first was education. Many immigrants leave their country to receive a good education. My interviewee, Kojo Appiah benefited from that. He came to seek education that was much more beneficial overseas than in his home country. Second politically. As Appiah understood the role of the government in the United States, he became in love with it. His home country’s government did not represent the people or had the best interest for them. And lastly, Appiah realized that America was not only different politically, but culturally. He realized that the communication is different and had to learn how to become a true American, by not have citizen status, but culturally assimilating. He today, identifies himself as an American.Item Nigerian War - American Politics(2005-05-23) Cole, Steven R; Gordon, David M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Nigerian Civil War or the War of Biafran Secession began on May 27, 1967 and ended on January 12, 1970. The war cost an estimated 500,000 to one million lives, and had a particularly devastating effect on the civilians living in the Eastern Nigeria (Biafra). From its colonial beginnings, Nigeria seemed destined for regional conflict. After independence, two military led coups in 1966 highlighted the regional problems inherent in the Nigerian Federal governmental system. Less than a year after the second coup, the eastern region seceded from Nigeria and plunged the nation into a civil war for nearly three years. The United States, a reluctant participant in the war, deferred all responsibility in the resolution of the war to the British or the Organization of African Unity (OAU) until photographs of starving Nigerian children became a political liability for the U.S. government.Item Iconography and Continuity in West Africa: Calabar Terracottas and the Arts of the Cross River Region of Nigeria/Cameroon(2005-04-18) Slogar, Christopher; Eyo, Ekpo; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent archaeological investigations conducted jointly by the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments and the University of Maryland, under the direction of Ekpo Eyo, yielded a large number of decorated terracotta vessels, headrests, and anthropomorphic figurines at Calabar, Nigeria, which date to the fifth-fifteenth century A.D. The decoration includes a variety of discrete geometric motifs, such as concentric circles, spirals, lozenges, and cruciforms, among others. This iconography is described and compared to information available in historical sources in order to locate the terracottas within the broader narrative of visual culture in the Cross River region. The decoration of the terracottas reveals strong correspondences to modern art production across a variety of media, foreshadowing in particular the ideographic script called nsibidi (or nsibiri), which has been the subject of scholarly interest since the early twentieth century. Calabar gained international prominence in the seventeenth century due to the burgeoning transatlantic slave trade, was later named the seat of the British colonial government in Southern Nigeria, and is today the capital of Cross River State, Nigeria. While the accounts of traders, missionaries, colonial officials, and modern researchers offer much information about Calabar during this time, its earlier history remains largely unknown. Thus, the terracottas offer valuable new insight into the period prior to the initiation of the transatlantic trade and reveal a continuity of artistic traditions that is significantly deeper and more widespread than previously considered.