Shobana Shankar
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3613865 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Shobana Shankar |
| PRENOMES | Shobana |
| SOBRENOME | Shankar |
| ASSINATURA | SHANKAR S |
| AFILIAÇÕES | State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3385-1146 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 23 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 23 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2000 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
Introduction
Touching scenes
The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, founded in British India in 1889, has many followers in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other West African countries, and has fostered cultural transformations that have rarely been discussed in scholarship on African–South Asian interactions. Through a history of media produced by and about the Ahmadiyya, this article shows how black and white photographs shaped a vibrant visual economy that constructed West Afr…
Religious Plurality in Africa
The Indian Question in Afrocentric Politics
For African-Indian relationships, the idealism of Afro-Asian solidarity did not often match realities on the ground, which were volatile and rapidly changing from the 1940s. This essay explores how Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians was embedded in a racial calculus that had a history beyond Uganda in 1972, in the context of ongoing struggles for African independence, Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and religious nationalism in the Middle East. The Ind…
Hajj Humanitarianism
This article explores how pilgrimage to Arabia became the catalyst for Northern Nigerian Muslim leaders to develop a kind of humanitarianism for the poor to expand their political power in the era of independence from Britain and postcolonial Afro-Arab alliance-making. Muslim elites forced the British to provide welfare for poor pilgrims who conducted the pilgrimage over land through Sudan and then undertook their own relief and reform as means t…
Religion in Precolonial Nigeria
This essay explores the history and historiography of religion in Nigeria before the twentieth century, focusing on interconnectivity across different communities and across periods divided into the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras. The richness of Nigerian sources, studied with a critical eye to historical power dynamics and the subjectivities of those who produced religious narratives, reveals many insights about precolonial Nigeria…
A Missing Link
This essay explores how West Africa became a landscape of religious exchange, creativity and synthesis connecting Africa and South Asia. It follows the lead of Afe Adogame and Jim Spickard, who argue that ‘Africa is not merely a passive recipient of global pressures. It is also a site of religious creativity that has had considerable effect on the outside world. The growth and global influence of the three religious heritages of sub-Saharan Afric…
Fears of Indian independence
This chapter argues that the new Indian government under Nehru and the Indian diaspora need to change the course of their relations with Africans after 1947. Kenya’s Mau Mau emergency and anti-Indian riots in South Africa exposed African anger at land expropriation and racial segregation. As racial segregation was breaking down, tensions rose over cultural exclusion, superiority, and economic competition. The government of India wanted to combat …
Race as postcolonial strategy
This chapter examines the fraying of Afro-Indian alliances and the search for cultural diplomatic alternatives. In 1974, Senegalese President Léopold Senghor and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi jointly created Indo-African studies departments at the University of Dakar and Annamalai University. This project was a non-Western alternative to “area studies,” serving the imperative for postcolonial and decolonial education and the political need …
A cultural economy between the Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean
This chapter traces the growth of a West African-Indian cultural economy from the early 1900s, challenging the geographical and ideological limits of Gilroy’s Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean frameworks. A multidirectional flow of texts, images, and people produced African-Indian exchanges seen to possess power and danger. New cultural expressions included Mami Wata worship and novel Islamic movements such as the Indian Ahmadiyya missionary moveme…
Muslim–Christian relations in Africa
This chapter surveys the history of Muslim–Christian relations in Africa and some contemporary developments, including the changing perspectives on the topic since the late 1999s. The focus on religious conflict – particularly in Western policy and security perspectives oriented towards Africa’s largest nation Nigeria – has been challenged by scholars and African activists who reveal the ebbs and flows of religious coexistence in many African com…
An Uneasy Embrace
The entwined histories of Blacks and Indians defy easy explanation. From Ghanaian protests over Gandhi statues to American Vice President Kamala Harris's story, this relationship--notwithstanding moments of common struggle--seethes with conflicts that reveal how race reverberates throughout the modern world. Shobana Shankar's groundbreaking intellectual history tackles the controversial question of how Africans and Indians make and unmake their d…
Singing and Sensing the Unknown
Hinduism fits well into the “sound-filled” West African religious soundscape, which is a scene of competition and conflict. This article explores the soundscape of devotional singing, mantras, and prayers as a central part of the embodiment and embedment of Hinduism among Africans in Ghana, where the Indian diaspora has been relatively small and the indigenous movement of Hinduism entirely through African initiative. Using ethnographic and writte…
Race, Ethnicity, and Assimilation
This article traces the influences of American anthropology and racial discourse on Christian missions and indigenous converts in British Northern Nigeria from the 1920s. While colonial ethnological studies of religious and racial difference had represented non-Muslim Northern Nigerians as inherently different from the Muslim Hausa and Fulani peoples, the American missionary Albert Helser, a student of Franz Boas, applied American theories and pr…
Barbara Mann Wall, Into Africa
This book provides needed perspective on neglected topics in the history of medical missions. Wall focuses on Catholic women medical missionaries working in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and, to a lesser degree, Uganda after the First World War. Citing Adrian Hastings, she notes the significance of this period because the Catholic missionary movement was ‘accelerating; in the 1950s there were more foreign missionaries in Africa than ever before’ (p. 1…
Hindu Gods in West Africa
Religion on the Move!
How do religions spread in today’s world, where Christian missions have lost influence and modern nations have replaced colonial empires? Religions on the Move is a collection of essays charting new religious expansions. Contemporary evangelists may be Nigerian, Korean, Brazilian or Congolese, working at the grassroots and outside the mainstream in Pentecostal, reformist Islamic, and Hindu spiritual currents. While transportation and media provid…
Parchman Women Write the Blues? What Became of Black Women’s Prison Music in Mississippi in the 1930s
Research Article| July 01 2013 Parchman Women Write the Blues? What Became of Black Women's Prison Music in Mississippi in the 1930s Shobana Shankar Shobana Shankar Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2013) 31 (2): 183–202. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.31.2.0183 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Em…
Faith in schools
American Evangelicals in Egypt
Medical Missionaries and Modernizing Emirs in Colonial Hausaland
This article argues that emirs modernized and enhanced their authority through cooperation with Christian missions in the anti-leprosy campaign in colonial Hausaland in the 1930s. New documentary and oral sources detail how Native Administrations and Sudan Interior Mission workers together established leprosaria that were important beyond religious interaction. Emirs translated Islamic ideals of charity into governmental responsibility for medica…
The Social Dimensions of Christian Leprosy Work among Muslims
Graduate Students
No abstract
Insecurities of Expulsion
When Renu Joshi, a young woman living in Kampala, was murdered in December 1997, much of the local Indian community became embroiled in the tragedy. Their involvement began with the call Joshi’s hu...
American Evangelicals in Egypt
Medical Missionaries and Modernizing Emirs in Colonial Hausaland
This article argues that emirs modernized and enhanced their authority through cooperation with Christian missions in the anti-leprosy campaign in colonial Hausaland in the 1930s. New documentary and oral sources detail how Native Administrations and Sudan Interior Mission workers together established leprosaria that were important beyond religious interaction. Emirs translated Islamic ideals of charity into governmental responsibility for medica…
Graduate Students
No abstract
The Social Dimensions of Christian Leprosy Work among Muslims
Medical Missionaries and Modernizing Emirs in Colonial Hausaland
This article argues that emirs modernized and enhanced their authority through cooperation with Christian missions in the anti-leprosy campaign in colonial Hausaland in the 1930s. New documentary and oral sources detail how Native Administrations and Sudan Interior Mission workers together established leprosaria that were important beyond religious interaction. Emirs translated Islamic ideals of charity into governmental responsibility for medica…
American Evangelicals in Egypt
Religion on the Move!
How do religions spread in today’s world, where Christian missions have lost influence and modern nations have replaced colonial empires? Religions on the Move is a collection of essays charting new religious expansions. Contemporary evangelists may be Nigerian, Korean, Brazilian or Congolese, working at the grassroots and outside the mainstream in Pentecostal, reformist Islamic, and Hindu spiritual currents. While transportation and media provid…
Parchman Women Write the Blues? What Became of Black Women’s Prison Music in Mississippi in the 1930s
Research Article| July 01 2013 Parchman Women Write the Blues? What Became of Black Women's Prison Music in Mississippi in the 1930s Shobana Shankar Shobana Shankar Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2013) 31 (2): 183–202. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.31.2.0183 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Em…
Faith in schools
Hindu Gods in West Africa
Race, Ethnicity, and Assimilation
This article traces the influences of American anthropology and racial discourse on Christian missions and indigenous converts in British Northern Nigeria from the 1920s. While colonial ethnological studies of religious and racial difference had represented non-Muslim Northern Nigerians as inherently different from the Muslim Hausa and Fulani peoples, the American missionary Albert Helser, a student of Franz Boas, applied American theories and pr…
Barbara Mann Wall, Into Africa
This book provides needed perspective on neglected topics in the history of medical missions. Wall focuses on Catholic women medical missionaries working in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and, to a lesser degree, Uganda after the First World War. Citing Adrian Hastings, she notes the significance of this period because the Catholic missionary movement was ‘accelerating; in the 1950s there were more foreign missionaries in Africa than ever before’ (p. 1…
Fears of Indian independence
This chapter argues that the new Indian government under Nehru and the Indian diaspora need to change the course of their relations with Africans after 1947. Kenya’s Mau Mau emergency and anti-Indian riots in South Africa exposed African anger at land expropriation and racial segregation. As racial segregation was breaking down, tensions rose over cultural exclusion, superiority, and economic competition. The government of India wanted to combat …
Race as postcolonial strategy
This chapter examines the fraying of Afro-Indian alliances and the search for cultural diplomatic alternatives. In 1974, Senegalese President Léopold Senghor and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi jointly created Indo-African studies departments at the University of Dakar and Annamalai University. This project was a non-Western alternative to “area studies,” serving the imperative for postcolonial and decolonial education and the political need …
A cultural economy between the Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean
This chapter traces the growth of a West African-Indian cultural economy from the early 1900s, challenging the geographical and ideological limits of Gilroy’s Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean frameworks. A multidirectional flow of texts, images, and people produced African-Indian exchanges seen to possess power and danger. New cultural expressions included Mami Wata worship and novel Islamic movements such as the Indian Ahmadiyya missionary moveme…
Muslim–Christian relations in Africa
This chapter surveys the history of Muslim–Christian relations in Africa and some contemporary developments, including the changing perspectives on the topic since the late 1999s. The focus on religious conflict – particularly in Western policy and security perspectives oriented towards Africa’s largest nation Nigeria – has been challenged by scholars and African activists who reveal the ebbs and flows of religious coexistence in many African com…
An Uneasy Embrace
The entwined histories of Blacks and Indians defy easy explanation. From Ghanaian protests over Gandhi statues to American Vice President Kamala Harris's story, this relationship--notwithstanding moments of common struggle--seethes with conflicts that reveal how race reverberates throughout the modern world. Shobana Shankar's groundbreaking intellectual history tackles the controversial question of how Africans and Indians make and unmake their d…
Singing and Sensing the Unknown
Hinduism fits well into the “sound-filled” West African religious soundscape, which is a scene of competition and conflict. This article explores the soundscape of devotional singing, mantras, and prayers as a central part of the embodiment and embedment of Hinduism among Africans in Ghana, where the Indian diaspora has been relatively small and the indigenous movement of Hinduism entirely through African initiative. Using ethnographic and writte…
Religion in Precolonial Nigeria
This essay explores the history and historiography of religion in Nigeria before the twentieth century, focusing on interconnectivity across different communities and across periods divided into the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras. The richness of Nigerian sources, studied with a critical eye to historical power dynamics and the subjectivities of those who produced religious narratives, reveals many insights about precolonial Nigeria…
A Missing Link
This essay explores how West Africa became a landscape of religious exchange, creativity and synthesis connecting Africa and South Asia. It follows the lead of Afe Adogame and Jim Spickard, who argue that ‘Africa is not merely a passive recipient of global pressures. It is also a site of religious creativity that has had considerable effect on the outside world. The growth and global influence of the three religious heritages of sub-Saharan Afric…
Hajj Humanitarianism
This article explores how pilgrimage to Arabia became the catalyst for Northern Nigerian Muslim leaders to develop a kind of humanitarianism for the poor to expand their political power in the era of independence from Britain and postcolonial Afro-Arab alliance-making. Muslim elites forced the British to provide welfare for poor pilgrims who conducted the pilgrimage over land through Sudan and then undertook their own relief and reform as means t…
Religious Plurality in Africa
Insecurities of Expulsion
When Renu Joshi, a young woman living in Kampala, was murdered in December 1997, much of the local Indian community became embroiled in the tragedy. Their involvement began with the call Joshi’s hu...
The Indian Question in Afrocentric Politics
For African-Indian relationships, the idealism of Afro-Asian solidarity did not often match realities on the ground, which were volatile and rapidly changing from the 1940s. This essay explores how Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians was embedded in a racial calculus that had a history beyond Uganda in 1972, in the context of ongoing struggles for African independence, Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and religious nationalism in the Middle East. The Ind…
Introduction
Touching scenes
The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, founded in British India in 1889, has many followers in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other West African countries, and has fostered cultural transformations that have rarely been discussed in scholarship on African–South Asian interactions. Through a history of media produced by and about the Ahmadiyya, this article shows how black and white photographs shaped a vibrant visual economy that constructed West Afr…
Sociology (19 obras) · Political science (18 obras) · History (14 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Gender Studies (12 obras) · Politics (12 obras) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (11 obras) · Race, History, and American Society (9 obras) · Anthropology (7 obras) · Archaeology (7 obras)