This event will take place online. Registrees will receive a link to the online platform one day before the start of the event. Scholars of empire recognise the scholarly value of the writings of European colonial traveler-ethnographers on African societies for their embodiment of the so-called “imperial gaze.” Drawn from a larger monographic project, this presentation reveals what emerges when we flip the inquiry to consider how colonised African elites who traveled to European colonial countries for sightseeing portrayed metropolitan cultures and peoples in their writings to African audiences. The focus in this presentation is on emirs and aristocrats from Northern Nigeria, who traveled to Britain between 1920 and 1960 for touristic adventures and returned with stories and metropolitan goods, penning Hausa and English language travelogues and giving public lectures on their experiences and observations in Britain. The paper posits this traveling, writing, and speaking endeavor as a form of colonial mediation. Speaker: Prof. Moses Ochonu, Vanderbilt University.
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