African Cultural Studies
Researching and teaching the languages and expressive cultures of Africa and Africans around the world since 1964

Marissa Moorman

Position title: Professor

Address:
Beginning in Fall 2021

Education

  • PhD’04 University of Minnesota

Bio

Currently Professor of History and Media Studies at Indiana University, Moorman has a national and international reputation as a leader in Angolan Studies, Southern African History, and African media studies. She has published two important books with a top university press (Ohio), numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals that shape African cultural studies, as well as book chapters and other shorter pieces. Her work on music, radio, and urban culture in contemporary Africa and Angola is one that no scholar in modern African history can ignore. Like her first book, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times! (2008), her second monograph, Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1933-2002 (2019), published in the highly regarded series “New African Histories,” makes a valuable contribution to the social and political history of Angola and Southern Africa. The book demonstrates how communication technologies and the media informed politics and social innovations.

Current CV

Selected Publications

  • Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1933-2002 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019) .
  • Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008).
  • “Luanda Humms and Buzzes: Urban Soundscapes, Club Music, and Dance, 1960-present,” forthcoming in Goethe Institut’s Johannes Hossfeld, Joyce Nyairo, and Florian Sievers, eds., Ten Cities: Berlin, Bristol, Cairo, Johannesburg, Kiev, Lagos, Lisbon, Luanda, Nairobi, Naples (Leipzig: Spector, 2020), 169-179.
  • Co-editor with Mónica de Miranda, Ana Balona de Oliveira, and Afonso Ramos, Atlantica: Contemporary Art in Angola and Its Diaspora (Lisbon: Hangar productions, March 2019).
  • “Bonga’s Transatlantic Routes,” Revista TransVersos revista de história, no. 15 (Jan-Abr), 2019: 445-452 [P].
  • With Delinda Collier, “Medium and media in Angola: expressive practices in context,” in De Miranda, Moorman, Oliveira, and Ramos, Atlantica: Contemporary Art in Angola and Its Diaspora, (Lisbon: Hangar productions, March 2019), 209-214.