Nicolas Argenti
Senior Lecturer
Social Anthropology
Brunel University
Uxbridge, UB8 3PH
United Kingdom
Biography
Qualifications
- PhD (University College London)
Personal Biography
My research in Cameroon focuses on youth and childhood, social hierarchy, and collective memories of slavery and political violence. In 2002 I co-edited a book on youth in Africa with Alex de Waal that brings together the Issue Papers prepared for the Pan African Forum on the Future of Children in Africa, jointly held by UNICEF and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo in May 2001. My monograph, The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence and Belated Histories in the Cameroon Grassfields, an ethnography of the development of youth as a political force in the Cameroon Grassfields, came out with the University of Chicago Press in 2007. I continue my investigation into historical memory in Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission (Berghahn 2010), a book I co-edited with Katharina Schramm on the relationship between violence and memory which brings together case studies from round the world, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Central and South America, and Africa.
Research
Research Overview
From 1990 to 2010 my research focused on the Grassfields area of Cameroon, with a period of post doctoral research in Southern Sri Lanka from 1996 to 1998. My research focuses on childhood, youth, performance, political violence and collective memory.
I was on research leave for the 2009-10 academic year, beginning a new research project on social memory in Chios, Greece. In 2011 I received an ESRC Mid-Career Development Fellowship and am on research leave for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 academic years. The project, 'Remembering Absence: Catastrophe, Displacement, and Identity Among Chiots and the Chiot Diaspora,' examines collective memories of the 1822 massacres of Chios. The project aims to provide a comparative analysis of social memories of these events in two distinct communities: the diaspora descended from survivors of the massacre who settled in Europe and America on the one hand, and contemporary inhabitants of the island of Chios on the other.
Current Projects
ESRC
Remembering absence: catastrophe, displacement, and identity among Chiots and the Chiot Diaspora
£236,000
October 2011 - September 2013
Nicolas Argenti (PI)
Recently Completed Projects
Brunel University Research Leave Scheme
Social Memory in Chios Greece
2009 - 2010
Nicolas Argenti (PI)
PhD Supervision
Sharon Attard: Lived experiences of cultural diversity; Oct 2010 –
Silvia De Faveri: Violence, witchcraft and military metaphors in everyday life in Kinshasa; Mar 2009 –
Federica Guglielmo: TBC; Oct 2010
Teaching
Undergraduate Programmes
Module convenor
- The Anthropology of Childhood and Youth
Postgraduate Programmes
Programme convenor
- The Anthropology of Childhood, Youth and Education (co-convenor )
Module convenor
- The Anthropology of Childhood and Youth
- Anthropological Research Methods
External Activity
- External Examiner London School of Economics
- Council member Royal Anthropological Institute (2009-2012)
- Editorial Board Member, Africa, Journal of the International African Institute
- Member, Anglo-Hellenic League
- Member of the ESRC Peer Review College
Publications
Publications
Journal Papers
(2011) Argenti, N., Things of the ground: Children's medicine, motherhood and memory in the Cameroon grassfields, Africa 81 (2) : 269- 294
(2010) Argenti, N., Things that don't come by the road: Folktales, fosterage, and memories of slavery in the Cameroon grassfields, Comparative Studies in Society and History 52 (2) : 224- 254
(2006) Argenti, N. and Röschenthaler, U., Introduction: Between Cameroon and Cuba: Youth, slave trades and translocal memoryscapes, Social Anthropology 14 (1) : 33- 47
(2006) Argenti, N., Remembering the future: slavery, youth and masking in the Cameroon grassfields, Social Anthropology 14 (1) : 49- 69
(2002) Argenti, N., People of the chisel: Apprenticeship, youth and elites in Oku (Cameroon), American Ethnologist 29 (3) : 497- 533
(2001) Argenti, N., Kesum-body and the places of the gods: The politics of children's masking and second-world realities in Oku(Cameroon), Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7 (1) : 67- 94
(1998) Argenti, N., Air youth: performance, violence and the state in Cameroon, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (4) : 753- 782
(1997) Argenti, N., Review of Masks and masquerades by John Emigh, Journal of Material Culture 2 (3) : 361- 381
(1992) Argenti, N., African aesthetics: moving to see the mask, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO) 23 (3) : 197- 215
Book Chapters
(2013) Argenti, N., Follow the wood: Carving and political cosmology in Oku, Cameroon. In: Littlefield Kasfir, S. and Förster, T. eds. African Art and Agency in the Workshop. Indiana University Press (Forthcoming)
(2009) Argenti, N. and Schramm, K., Introduction: Remembering violence. In: Argenti, N. and Schramm, K. eds. Remembering violence: anthropological perspectives on intergenerational transmission. Oxford, UK : Berghahn Books
(2008) Argenti, N., Youth movements. In: Middleton, J. and Miller, JC. eds. New Encyclopedia of Africa. Charles Scribner's Sons
(2008) Argenti, N., Youth: Rural. In: Middleton, J. and Miller, JC. eds. New Encyclopedia of Africa. Charles Scribner's Sons
(2005) Argenti, N., Dancing in the borderlands: the forbidden masquerades of Oku youth and women (Cameroon). In: de Boeck, F. and Honwana, A. eds. Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa. Oxford, UK : James Currey Publishers 121- 149
(2004) Argenti, N., La danse aux frontières: les mascarades interdites des femmes et des jeunes à Oku. In: Bayart, J-F. and Warnier, J-P. eds. Matière à politique: le pouvoir, les corps et les choses. Paris : Karthala 151- 180
(2002) Argenti, N., Youth in Africa: a major resource for change. In: De Waal, A. and Argenti, N. eds. Young Africa: Realising the Rights of Children and Youth. Africa World Pr 123- 153
(2001) Argenti, N., Ephemeral monuments, memory and royal sempiternity in a Grassfields Kingdom. In: Forty, A. and Küchler, S. eds. The Art of Forgetting. Berg Publishers 21- 52
Books
(2010) Argenti, N. and Schramm, K., Remembering violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission. Berghahn
(2009) Argenti, N. and Schramm, K., Remembering violence, anthropological perspectives on integenerational transmission. Berghahn Books
(2007) Argenti, N., The intestines of the state: youth, violence and belated histories in the Cameroon grassfields. University of Chicago Press
(1999) Argenti, N., Is this how I looked when I first got here? Pottery and practice in the Cameroon Grassfields. British Museum Press
