Prita Meier | New York University (original) (raw)
Books by Prita Meier
On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border ... more On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border zone between the interior of the African continent and the Indian Ocean. Prita Meier explores this coastal environment and shows how an African mercantile society created a place of cosmopolitan longing. Meier understands architecture as more than a way to remake local space. Rather, the architecture of this liminal zone was an expression of the desire of coastal inhabitants to belong to places beyond their homeports. Here architecture embodies modern ideas and social identities engendered by the encounter of Africans with others in the Indian Ocean world.
Papers by Prita Meier
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art
This article explores how an oceanic perspective challenges still pervasive ideas about the const... more This article explores how an oceanic perspective challenges still pervasive ideas about the constitutive link between place and culture in the study of the arts of Africa. Taking the rich and diverse photographs of nineteenth-century coastal eastern Africa as a springboard, the author considers how portrait photography was not an expression of a local modernity, in the way the concept is narrated in established studies of the cultural dimensions of globalization, but was an expression of the in-between. This can be described as a form of cosmopolitanism or creolization, depending on one’s interpretive predilections, but, most important, it emphasizes that historical actors on the Swahili coast of eastern Africa did not worry about what was authentically local or indigenous in the making of modernity. In coastal eastern African port cities, the photograph became instantly popular in the 1860s, because it was linked to the traveling cultures of the port, giving new form to a very old ...
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 2011
: During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating th... more : During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating the role and meaning of "Africa" in current exhibitionand art-making practices. Who Knows Tomorrow, a multivenue exhibition organized by the Nationalgalerie, moved beyond multicultural celebrations of globalism and the overarching geographic and spatial taxonomies that still dominate most African art exhibitions. Instead, the exhibition
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 2011
: During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating th... more : During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating the role and meaning of "Africa" in current exhibitionand art-making practices. Who Knows Tomorrow, a multivenue exhibition organized by the Nationalgalerie, moved beyond multicultural celebrations of globalism and the overarching geographic and spatial taxonomies that still dominate most African art exhibitions. Instead, the exhibition
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2020
Focusing on the project to build a trans-African highway network during the 1960s and 1970s, this... more Focusing on the project to build a trans-African highway network during the 1960s and 1970s, this article argues for the need to develop a more dialectical understanding of the relationship between people and infrastructure than current architectural and urban scholarship affords. African leaders imagined infrastructure as a vehicle of Pan-African freedom, unity, and development, but its construction relied on expertise and funding from former colonial overlords. Based on archival research, visual analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya, this paper examines the highway’s imaginaries of decolonization, to show how infrastructure was both the business of statehood and the means of selfhood. From the automobile and the tarmac road itself to the aesthetics and practices of mobility it fostered, infrastructure was a vehicle for the production of subjectivity in post-independence Kenya. This new selfhood, future-oriented and on the move, was both victim and agent of commodification.
This chapter explores the role of photography as part of a larger spectrum of a culture of things... more This chapter explores the role of photography as part of a larger spectrum of a culture of things cultivated by East Africans for the performance of selfhood. Taking the rich and diverse photographs of nineteenth-century coastal East Africa as a springboard, I consider how portrait photography not only documents and expresses a sense of belonging and identity formation -issues which have been explored by Africanists extensively -but also how the photograph, through its indexical quality and very materiality, circulated in and out of Swahili spaces and cultural codes.
Review of "Who Knows Tomorrow"
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 2011
: During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating th... more : During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating the role and meaning of "Africa" in current exhibitionand art-making practices. Who Knows Tomorrow, a multivenue exhibition organized by the Nationalgalerie, moved beyond multicultural celebrations of globalism and the overarching geographic and spatial taxonomies that still dominate most African art exhibitions. Instead, the exhibition
On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border ... more On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border zone between the interior of the African continent and the Indian Ocean. Prita Meier explores this coastal environment and shows how an African mercantile society created a place of cosmopolitan longing. Meier understands architecture as more than a way to remake local space. Rather, the architecture of this liminal zone was an expression of the desire of coastal inhabitants to belong to places beyond their homeports. Here architecture embodies modern ideas and social identities engendered by the encounter of Africans with others in the Indian Ocean world.
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art
This article explores how an oceanic perspective challenges still pervasive ideas about the const... more This article explores how an oceanic perspective challenges still pervasive ideas about the constitutive link between place and culture in the study of the arts of Africa. Taking the rich and diverse photographs of nineteenth-century coastal eastern Africa as a springboard, the author considers how portrait photography was not an expression of a local modernity, in the way the concept is narrated in established studies of the cultural dimensions of globalization, but was an expression of the in-between. This can be described as a form of cosmopolitanism or creolization, depending on one’s interpretive predilections, but, most important, it emphasizes that historical actors on the Swahili coast of eastern Africa did not worry about what was authentically local or indigenous in the making of modernity. In coastal eastern African port cities, the photograph became instantly popular in the 1860s, because it was linked to the traveling cultures of the port, giving new form to a very old ...
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 2011
: During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating th... more : During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating the role and meaning of "Africa" in current exhibitionand art-making practices. Who Knows Tomorrow, a multivenue exhibition organized by the Nationalgalerie, moved beyond multicultural celebrations of globalism and the overarching geographic and spatial taxonomies that still dominate most African art exhibitions. Instead, the exhibition
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 2011
: During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating th... more : During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating the role and meaning of "Africa" in current exhibitionand art-making practices. Who Knows Tomorrow, a multivenue exhibition organized by the Nationalgalerie, moved beyond multicultural celebrations of globalism and the overarching geographic and spatial taxonomies that still dominate most African art exhibitions. Instead, the exhibition
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2020
Focusing on the project to build a trans-African highway network during the 1960s and 1970s, this... more Focusing on the project to build a trans-African highway network during the 1960s and 1970s, this article argues for the need to develop a more dialectical understanding of the relationship between people and infrastructure than current architectural and urban scholarship affords. African leaders imagined infrastructure as a vehicle of Pan-African freedom, unity, and development, but its construction relied on expertise and funding from former colonial overlords. Based on archival research, visual analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya, this paper examines the highway’s imaginaries of decolonization, to show how infrastructure was both the business of statehood and the means of selfhood. From the automobile and the tarmac road itself to the aesthetics and practices of mobility it fostered, infrastructure was a vehicle for the production of subjectivity in post-independence Kenya. This new selfhood, future-oriented and on the move, was both victim and agent of commodification.
This chapter explores the role of photography as part of a larger spectrum of a culture of things... more This chapter explores the role of photography as part of a larger spectrum of a culture of things cultivated by East Africans for the performance of selfhood. Taking the rich and diverse photographs of nineteenth-century coastal East Africa as a springboard, I consider how portrait photography not only documents and expresses a sense of belonging and identity formation -issues which have been explored by Africanists extensively -but also how the photograph, through its indexical quality and very materiality, circulated in and out of Swahili spaces and cultural codes.
Review of "Who Knows Tomorrow"
Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art, 2011
: During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating th... more : During the summer of 2010 the cityscape of Berlin became an important site for contemplating the role and meaning of "Africa" in current exhibitionand art-making practices. Who Knows Tomorrow, a multivenue exhibition organized by the Nationalgalerie, moved beyond multicultural celebrations of globalism and the overarching geographic and spatial taxonomies that still dominate most African art exhibitions. Instead, the exhibition