| Five Windows into Africa |
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Five Windows into Africa. By Patrick McNaughton, John H. Hanson, dele jegede, Ruth M. Stone, and N. Brian Winchester. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Two CD-ROM discs for Macintosh and Windows platforms, eight-page booklet. $39.95. This two-disc CD-ROM set represents the fruitful cooperation between five university professors who conduct research in Africa, the Teaching and Learning Technologies Laboratory at Indiana University (Bloomington), and the Indiana University Press. Taking as its starting point the richness of life in contemporary Africa, this interactive project presents the work of five scholars on five different kinds of cultural phenomena in order to introduce students to the cultural, social, ethnic, religious, and geographic vastness of Africa. And it does so without overwhelming. The particular viewpoints offered through each scholar's individually authored section highlight the insights of their respective disciplines---history, ethnomusicology, art history, political science---in an effort to simultaneously illustrate the results of analysis and the process of research. Such is the flexibility with which the CD-ROM media can be used: in Five Windows into Africa, original field notes, video clips, audio examples, spoken commentary, maps, and photographs come alive with the click of a mouse. The five sections of the CD-ROM cover different spheres of contemporary African cultures: art, music, history, religion, urban life, and politics. Each sphere is ostensibly the domain of one of the contributing scholars, and each case study is one of the windows into Africa. Patrick McNaughton, a professor of African Art History at IU Bloomington, examines a Malian dance called a "bird dance." His section focuses on the ways that the arts function in society and the multiple roles and meanings they can acquire. John Hanson (Professor of History and Director of African Studies at IU Bloomington) examines the impact of Islam in Africa through fieldwork in Ghana. His section of the CD-ROM uses interviews to explore the diversity of rituals and practices within a particular African community. Insight into the dynamic daily life of Lagos, Nigeria, is provided by dele jegede, Professor of Art History at Indiana State University, who examines the intersection of popular culture, arts, and religion in that city. Ruth Stone (Professor of Folklore, Ethnomusicology, and African Studies at IU Bloomington) approaches the complex funeral of a Liberian expatriate from an ethnomusicological perspective, exploring how musical traditions and practices interweave with social and political forces and concerns. Finally, N. Brian Winchester (Director of the Center for the Study of Global Change at IU Bloomington) investigates Zimbabwe's war of national liberation and illuminates the ways the country moved from colony to independent state. The various disciplinary backgrounds of each scholar complement each other overall, yet within each section they serve to effect specific analysis and subtle understandings. The wide range of material made available to the user via the CD-ROM format proves to be a fantastic asset, and installation is relatively easy. A few master files install onto the user's hard drive, and the individual "windows" are accessed through a fairly intuitive interface. Due to the large amount of space used for video and audio material, the windows are split across the two discs in the set; depending on how you navigate through the project, you may be required to insert one or another of the discs at certain moments. This is the only catch, and it does not seem to present any technical problems or system freezes. At any rate, the instructions are clear and helpful. Five Windows into Africa is a versatile classroom tool and a testament to the dazzling breadth and depth of information that emerging technologies can convey. John Fenn |
