I started this site and is its primary author.
A native of Cape Town, South Africa, I live in Brooklyn, New York with my wife and daughter. Until recently I was an assistant professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I am now assistant professor in international affairs at the New School in Manhattan.
I am completing a manuscript about postapartheid South African media culture in the age of globalization. I have published, among others, in the academic journals, Politique Africaine and Media Culture and Society, and contributed to popular media like The Guardian, The National, and The Nation.
I am also a contributing editor at Chimurenga Magazine based in Cape Town.
My blog critiques and recycles African music, politics, culture as it appears in Western, mainly US, media outlets. More than that it is about being African immigrant culture in New York City. Not surprisingly, I blog mostly about global South African culture since that’s where I am from and what my work is still largely about.
* As for Leo Africanus (real name al-Hasan al-Wazzan): He was a 16th century African diplomat (he worked for the Sultan of Fez, the former capital of Morocco), kidnapped in 1518 by pirates in the Mediterranean. They brought him to Rome where he managed to become an adviser to Pope Leo X. Over a nine year period in the Vatican City, he compiled his Description of Africa, “… a collection of learning, hearsay, and personal anecdote that shaped European ideas about Africa for centuries.”
If you have any comments or suggestions, send me an email at dollabrand[at]gmail[dot]com.
