Julie MacArthur

VIEW to the U: An eye on UTM academic community

Destination: Africa On today’s episode of the VIEW to the U podcast we are talking mapping borders and territories and its impact on identities in Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with Professor Julie MacArthur, an Assistant Professor in UofT Mississauga's Department of Historical Studies and cross appointed in the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts & Science on the U of T St. George campus. She is also a Fellow with the Jackman Humanities Institute at UofT. We cover a range of other topics that relate to Julie's work, such as aesthetic education and African cinema, as well as a special event she is participating in with Masai Ujiri, president of the Toronto Raptors, in relation to Black History Month as it draws to a close for 2019. With this new, third season of the VIEW to the U highlighting UTM’s Global Perspectives, Julie will discuss her research, which focuses on the role of geographic borders and local practices of space, representation and memory shaping constructions of community, power, and dissent in modern Africa. In her research she has investigated electoral politics, linguistic history, and the making of political communities. Her first book, Cartography and the Political Imagination in Colonial Kenya, published in 2016, explores mapping and dissenting politics in Kenya. In 2017, she edited and served as primary author on the book Dedan Kimathi on Trial: Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion. Her new research project, “Radical Cartographies,” investigates the alternative mappings of decolonization, sovereignty, and citizenship across eastern Africa from 1950-1976. In addition, her work in African representation extends to the field of African cinema, where Julie has worked as both a curator and an academic. Her project, “African Cinema and the Historical Imagination,” explores the ways in which Africans tell their stories through the technology of film. She has also worked as a programming associate with the Toronto International Film Festival and Film Africa in London, as well as serving as the Director of the Cambridge African Film Festival for several years. Julie regularly curates film programmes and participates in film forums and festivals around the world. A full transcript of the podcast interview is available: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/vp-research/sites/files/vp-research/shared/Julie%20MacArthur-transcribed%2CFeb2019.pdf.