Journal of West African History

Located at the cutting edge of new scholarship on the social, cultural, economic, and political history of West Africa, JWAH fills a representational gap by providing a forum for serious scholarship and debate on women and gender, sexuality, slavery, oral history, popular and public culture, and religion. The editorial board (Nwando Achebe, Saheed Aderinto, Trevor Getz, Vincent Hiribarren, Harry Odamtten, Mark Deets, and Ndubueze Mbah) encourages authors to explore a wide range of topical, theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives in new and exciting ways. The journal is committed to rigorous thinking and analysis; is international in scope; and offers a critical intervention about knowledge production. Scholarly reviews of current books in the field appear in every issue. And the publication is in both English and French; an abstract in both languages will be provided. All JWAH issues can be found on JSTOR and Project MUSE. In addition to scholarly articles, JWAH features recurring segments, called forums, dedicated to unraveling and engaging with important intellectual questions. “Retrospectives” brings together the most established scholars in the field who contribute historiographical essays and reflection pieces about current thinking and new directions in scholarship about West Africa’s history. “Thinking Digitally” engages new digital media and technologies as tools for historical research and documentation of West African realities, probing especially how historical practice, presentation, and analysis can be translated in digital terms. The forum “Conversations” asks leading scholars engage in debate with the past and present of West African history on topics as significant and varied as LGBTI rights and discrimination; health, healing, and disease; and wealth and security issues; to name but a few. Finally, “The Teaching Scholar” forum features articles that throw teaching pedagogies into conversation with scholarship.

Read JWAH issues online and view tables of contents at Project MUSE and the Scholarly Publishing Collective.