Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC on the globe (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As usual, this is not an exhaustive bibliography on the different topics related to the Kuba history and culture; much more modestly, this bibliography reflects my readings, the essays/books/articles I’ve fully read with interest and I would recommend to you, and those that I’ve quoted in my texts.

 

• Jan Vansina (Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA)

The Children of Woot – A History of the Kuba Peoples, The University of Wisconsin Press – Dawson, 1978, USA – UK.

*******************************************************

• Monni Adams (American anthropologist and historian, curator at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology)

* Kuba Embroidered Cloth, in African Arts, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Nov., 1978), pp. 24-39+106-107, published by UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center  

* Reviewed Work: Shoowa Design: African Textiles from the Kingdom of Kuba by Georges Meurant, in African Arts, Vol. 21, No. 1, Nov. 1987.

* 18th-Century Kuba King Figures, in African Arts, Vol. 21, No. 3, May 1988.

*******************************************************

• Elizabeth Bennett and Niangi Batulukisi

Kuba Textiles & Design, Africa Direct, Denver, 2009

*******************************************************

• Dorothy K. Washburn (Anthropologist, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Style, Classification and Ethnicity: Design Categories on Bakuba Raffia Cloth, in “Transactions of the American Philosophical Society”, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 3 (1990), pp. i-xi+1-157 (167 pages)

*******************************************************

• Manitou Nsaka (London based independent journalist and entrepreneur)

The Vanishing Kuba Textile, Duarra, Blue Fox Communications Ltd., 2020.

*******************************************************

• Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, James A. Robinson, Jonathan Weigel

The Evolution of Culture and Institutions: Evidence from the Kuba Kingdom, Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA, December 2015

*******************************************************

• David A. Binkley, Patricia Darish

Kuba, 5 Continents Editions, Milan – Italie, 2009 (in French only)

*******************************************************

• Sam Hilu, Irwin Hersey

Textile Art of the Bakuba – Velvet Embroideries in Raffia, Schiffer Publishing Ltd., PA, USA, 2003

*******************************************************

• Georges Meurant

Shoowa Design – African Textiles from the Kingdom of Kuba, Thames and Hudson, London, UK, 1986 (reprinted in 1995)

*******************************************************

• Kevin Tervala, Matthew S. Polk Jr., and Amy L. Gould

KUBA, Fabric of an Empire, Art on view, Catalogue of the 2018 exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, USA

*******************************************************

• Rachel Wilson (Bowling Green State University)

Wrapped in Tradition: Ceremonial Skirts of Kuba Women in the Western Congo Basin, Africana Studies, 20th Student Research Conference, February 2018.

*******************************************************

• Patricia Darish (professor of Africa Art at the Kress Foundation Department of Art History, University of Kansas and Kansas City Art Institute)

Dressing for the next life: raffia textile production and use among the Kuba of Zaïre, in Cloth and Human Experience, edited by Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, Washington DC, USA

*******************************************************

Syssi Mananga – NIEKESE, feat. Rico Amaj

Syssi Mananga, “la princesse congolaise de l’afro soul”, born to a Congolese mother and Belgian father, has emerged as a talented singer, songwriter and performer with an original fusion of styles at the crossroads of Congolese rhythms, jazz, folk and pop. Ivorian singer Rico Amaj is the rising star of Ivorian RnB. Niekese, a Lingala word meaning “in a gentle and smooth way,” is a hymn to life sung in the artists’ native languages: Lingala from the Congo and Baoulé from the Ivory Coast.

KUBA TEXTILES AND MATHEMATICS

 

• Sushil Bhakar (a researcher in computer science), Eric Hortop (a mathematician), Cheryl Kolak Dudek (associate professor of Print Media), Sylvain Muise (an expert in applied mathematics), and Fred E. Szabo (professor of Mathematics)

Textiles, Patterns, and Technology: Digital Tools for the Geometric Analysis of Cloth and Culture, in “Textile”, Volume 2, Issue 3, Berg UK, 2004.

*******************************************************

• Ron Eglash (American expert in cybernetics and a professor both at the School of Information and and at the School of Design of the University of Michigan, USA)

African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999.

*******************************************************

• Paulus Gerdes (a Dutch mathematician and Rector of the Pedagogical University of Mozambique, who passed away in 2014)

* On Mathematics in the History of Sub-Saharan Africa 1, in “Historia Mathematica”, 21 (1994), 345-376

* Ethnomathematics and Education in Africa, 2nd edition 2014, ISTEG, Mozambique. You can read this book online via this link.

*******************************************************

• Dorothy K. Washburn, Donald W. Crowe

Symmetries of Culture: Theory and Practice of Plane Pattern Analysis, Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 1988

*******************************************************

Alyx Becerra