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African Venice

A Guide to Art, Culture and People
  • Paul Kaplan and Shaul Bassi
  • Afterword by: Maaza Mengiste and Maaza Mengiste
  • Preface by: Igiaba Scego and Igiaba Scego
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025
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About this book

African Venice is the first guidebook to the extensive historical and contemporary African presence in the city of the lagoons. A set of ten walking tours highlights images of Black people in Venetian art from the Middle Ages to the present, the afterlife of Shakespeare’s Othello, the painful local legacies of slavery and Italian colonialism, and the remarkable visibility of African and Afro-descendant artists at the Venice Biennale. These tours are enriched by more than twenty essays, poems, and reflections that celebrate, question, and reimagine Venice’s Black past and present. From premodern paintings and sculpture to contemporary artworks, African Venice will show you the city as you have never seen it.

The book includes contributions from Marilena Umuhoza Delli, Rita Dove, Emiliano Guaraldo, Eddy L. Harris, Lorenzo Lazzarini, Ibrahima Lö, Vittorio Longhi, Olga Manente, Tony Mochama, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Caryl Phillips, Sandra Stocchetto, Sami Tchak, Ngūgī wa Thiong’o, and Alessandra Viola.

Potential course book use for art history.

Historically significant guidebook to popular tourist destination.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Paul Kaplan Paul Kaplan is Professor of Art History at Purchase College, SUNY. He is the author of Contraband Guides: Race, Transatlantic Culture, and the Arts in the Civil War Era, also published by Penn State University Press and The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art, and a contributor to The Image of the Black in Western Art. He served as Project Scholar for Fred Wilson’s Speak of Me as I Am, an installation in the American Pavilion of the 2003 Venice Biennale. --- Contributor: Shaul Bassi Shaul Bassi is Professor of English and the Director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Italy and Italy’s Shakespeare: Place, “Race,” Politics and coeditor of Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide. He is the cofounder of the Venice international literary festival Incroci di civiltà. --- Contributor: Igiaba Scego Igiaba Scego is a Somali-Italian writer, public intellectual, and scholar. Her numerous award-winning publications include, in English translation, the novels Adua, Beyond Babylon, and The Color Line. --- Contributor: Maaza Mengiste Maaza Mengiste’s debut novel Beneath the Lion’s Gaze was selected by The Guardian as one of the ten best contemporary African books. Her novel The Shadow King was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

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  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    1
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    Contents

    5
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    How to Use This Book

    9
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    Foreword

    11
    Igiaba Scego
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    Africa in Venice. The Past

    21
    Paul Kaplan
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    Africa in Venice. The Present

    37
    Shaul Bassi
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    The Itineraries

    49
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    itinerary I The Buildings of Piazza San Marco and the Piazzetta Between Two Worlds

    53
    Eddy L. Harris
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    African Stones

    76
    Lorenzo Lazzarini
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    itinerary II The Sestiere of San Marco Contemporary African Art in Venice

    83
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    itinerary III The Accademia Museum

    99
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    A Miracle in Venice

    111
    Maaza Mengiste
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    The Black Gondolier

    115
    Marilena Umuhoza Delli
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    itinerary IV The Sestiere of Dorsoduro

    119
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    Giuseppina Bakhita

    131
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    Olga Manente

    133
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    coffee break African Routes of the Venetian Coffee Trade

    135
    Sandra Stocchetto
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    Home Brew: Preliminary Tasting Notes

    140
    Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
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    itinerary V The Sestieri of San Polo and Santa Croce

    147
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    A Bridge Over the Chasm of Indifference

    159
    Vittorio Longhi
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    The Scents of Africa

    162
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    itinerary VI The Sestiere of Cannaregio

    165
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    Sarah’s Blues

    176
    Rita Dove
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    In the Ghetto

    178
    Caryl Phillips
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    Death of the Last Venetian Mosquito

    182
    Tony Mochama
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    itinerary VII The Sestiere of Castello

    185
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    Resurrection in Venice

    197
    Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o
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    The Garden of Palm Trees

    200
    Alessandra Viola
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    itinerary VIII The Biennale

    205
    Emiliano Guaraldo
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    itinerary IX The Outlying Parts of the Lagoon: the Smaller Islands, Mestre and Marghera

    221
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    Beads of Venice

    233
    Emiliano Guaraldo
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    A Senegalese in Venice

    237
    Ibrahima Lö
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    The Rabbi

    240
    Sami Tchak
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    itinerary X The Terraferma: Padua, Vicenza, and Verona

    243
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    Appendix

    256
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    The Least of All Things

    261
    Maaza Mengiste
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    Acknowledgments

    265
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    Photo Credits

    267
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    Essential Bibliography

    270
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
June 5, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780271100012
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
272
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271100012
eBook ISBN: 9780271100012
Keywords for this book
City of the Lagoons; walking tour; guidebook; Black art history; Venetian art; Othello; Middle Ages; Slavery; Italian colonialism; Venice Biennale; Renaissance; medieval; sculpture; postcolonial; contemporary artworks
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