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Contributors Heather Marie Akou is a Ph.D. student in Design, Housing, and Apparel at the University of Minnesota. Her essay was drawn from her M.A. thesis, “Rethinking Fashion: The Case of Somali Women’s Dress in Minneapolis–St. Paul as an Evaluation of Herbert Blumer’s Theory on Fashion.” Jean Allman teaches African history at the University of Illinois. She is author of The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (1993) and, with Victoria Tashjian,“I Will Not Eat Stone”: A Women’s History of Colonial Asante (2000). She recently edited and introduced Women in African Colonial Histories (2002) with Susan Geiger and Nakanyike Musisi. Her research on gender, colonialism , and social change has appeared in the Journal of African History; Africa; Gender and History; and History Workshop Journal. Boatema Boateng is Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include global cultural ®ows and their regulation. Judith By¤eld teaches African history at Dartmouth College. She was guest editor of a special issue of African Studies Review, “Rethinking the African Diaspora,” and is author of The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Women Dyers in Abeokuta (Nigeria), 1890–1940 (2002). Her research primarily focuses on women ’s social and economic history and nationalism in colonial Nigeria. Laura Fair is Associate Professor of History at the University of Oregon. Her ¤rst book, Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945 (2001), explores the social history of various forms of urban culture, including dress. She is currently working on a history of commercial cinema in colonial East Africa. Karen Tranberg Hansen teaches anthropology at Northwestern University. She recently completed research into the international trade in, and consumption of, secondhand clothing in Zambia, with speci¤c focus on exploring the nature of local clothing “theories.” Her most recent book from this research is Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia (2000). Her Keeping House in Lusaka (1997) is based on longitudinal research in a low-income area on household dynamics , gender, and work. She is continuing her research in Lusaka with a focus on youth as part of a collaborative project with colleagues from the University of Copenhagen entitled Youth and the City: Resources, Skills, and Social Reproduction . Margaret Jean Hay teaches African history at Boston University and is editor of the International Journal of African Historical Studies. She has edited and introduced two collections on African women (African Women South of the Sahara [1984, 2nd ed. 1995] with Sharon Stichter, and African Women and the Law: Historical Perspectives [1982] with Marcia Wright), and recently edited and introduced African Novels in the Classroom (2000). Andrew M. Ivaska is Assistant Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal. He recently completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan entitled “Negotiating ‘Culture’in a Cosmopolitan Capital: Urban Style and the State in Colonial and Postcolonial Dar es Salaam.” With research interests in the cultural politics of African cities, he has written on cinema, modernity, and youth in twentieth-century Tanzania. Phyllis M. Martin teaches African history at Indiana University. Issues of cloth, dress, and fashion have been important aspects of her publications, including The External Trade of the Loango Coast, 1576–1870: The Effects of Changing Commercial Relations on the Vili Kingdom of Loango (1972); Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (1995); articles in the Journal of African History, African Economic History , and Muntu; and a chapter in Macht der Identität–Identität der Macht: Politische Prozesse und kultureller Wandel in Afrika, edited by Heidi Willer, Till Förster, and Claudia Ortner-Buchberger (1995). She has edited with Patrick O’Meara Africa (1977, 2nd ed. 1986, 3rd ed. 1995), and with David Birmingham History of Central Africa (three volumes, 1982–98), and is a former editor of the Journal of African History. Marissa Moorman is a Ph.D. candidate in African History at the University of Minnesota. She is presently writing her dissertation, entitled “‘Feel Angolan with This Music’: A Social History of Music and the Nation, Luanda, Angola, 1945–75.” Elisha P. Renne is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan. She is author of Cloth That Does Not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life (1995) and co-edited Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, Interpretations (2001) with Etienne van de Walle, and Population and Development Issues: Ideas...

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