Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World

ANDREW APTER is professor of history and anthropology at the University of California - Los Angeles, where he directs the James S. Coleman African Studies Center. His books include Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society (1992), The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria (2005), and Beyond Words: Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa (2007), all with the University of Chicago Press. LAUREN DERBY is associate professor of history at the University of California - Los Angeles. Her publications include The Dictator's Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo (2009), and articles on rumor and politics in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Puerto Rico.