In August 2023, Ashleigh Harris partnered with ALMEDA researcher Pedzisai Maedza (University College Dublin), Nkululeko Sibanda (University of Pretoria), and Kelvin Chikonzo (University of Harare) to catalogue the manuscript collection of Rooftop Productions’ Theatre in the Park, directed by Daves Guzha.
In addition to cataloguing the 253 manuscripts in Rooftop Productions’ collection (all data is available on request), we also discovered the remnants of a fragmented archive of the National Theatre Organisation of Zimbabwe. Some materials from the NTO archive, including some historically significant materials such as the typed manuscript for a play, A Dying Beauty by Stanlake Samkange, has been incorporated into Rooftop Theatre’s collection. Another part of the NTO collection is being catalogued at the REPS theatre in Zimbabwe. The third part of the collection we found severely damaged in an open-air cage where it has been left to the elements. We are currently attempting to find out whether there is an available catalogue of this material so that we can assess whether to initiate a salvage exercise or not.
The South African magazine, Zonk! African People’s Pictorial, ran from August 1949 until June 1964, during which time it published 298 literary works, predominantly short stories and photo plays. The rise of the popularity of the photo play in the 1960s is evident in Zonk!, which began publishings 23-page photo…
Edi Ganzel was a prolific writer of serialised novels in late 1960s and early 1970s Tanzania. Ursula Oberst has been using his work in Kenyan magazine Taifa Weekly to model serialised fiction in our metadata ontology. Give her feedback and see her current modelling on our Wikidata project site. Image:…
ALMEDA is proud to co-sponsor this year’s African Digital Humanities Symposium, Digital Humanities, African Stories and Agency organised by Brian Rosenblum and James Yékú of the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas. The ALMEDA team will also partner with Karen Ijumba (Poetry Africa, Open…
Staffrider was a South African literary magazine that ran in 37 numbers from 1978 to 1993, published by Raven Press, Johannesburg. The magazine has been digitised and made freely available by Digital Innovation South Africa at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (see the full collection here) The ALMEDA project is…