East Africa and the Classical Tradition

Welcome to the third episode in our new series of audio podcasts!

We're delighted to have teamed up with Carla Bocchetti from IFRA (French Institute for Research in Africa) in Nairobi to produce an episode all about a new volume that she's edited, East Africa, Global History and the Classical Traditions. 

The volume is a special issue of the journal Les Cahiers d'Afrique de l'Est: you can read the entire text on the IFRA Nairobi website. As Carla explains, her aim in editing this volume was to bring Classics into a conversation with other disciplines (including the study of 'Global History'), to show how "the global circulation of classical references in Africa make it possible to open a new dialogue with other traditions circulating in the rim of the Indian ocean world."

This episode features the voices of five authors who wrote chapters for the volume:

Carla Bocchetti (IFRA Nairobi)

Phiroze Vasunia (University College London)

Daniel Orrells (King's College London)

Sarah Longair (University of Lincoln)

Gordon Omenya (Pwani University)

Info at http://classicsconfidential.co.uk/2017/06/13/east-africa/

Join in the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #classicsconfide

Image credit: McMillan Library, Nairobi, completed 1931, designed by John Sinclair and Messrs. Rand Overy and Blackburn. Photograph: S. Longair. From Sarah's chapter "Visions of the Global: the Classical and the Eclectic in Colonial East African Architecture".