The Challenges and Possibilities of New Media in African Scholarship: The Case of Safundi adn U.S. - South African Comparative Studies

The journal 'Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies' and its online community has sought to develop the field of US-South African comparative studies beyond the foundation provided by Fredrickson et al. in the 1980s and 1990s by harnessing the strengths of electronic publishing. Using the development of 'Safundi' as a case study, the authors discuss the possibilities, challenges, and ultimate importance of electronic publishing to Africa-related scholarship. They trace the development of 'Safundi' from its debut in 1999 to its five-year anniversary in June 2004, a period of time when 'Safundi' expanded from an academic journal to an entire comparative community of two thousand members worldwide, with an editorial board of scholars from Africa and elsewhere, and with varied online resources: 'The Safundi Member Research Newsletter', the Online Member Database, the Comparative Bibliographic Database, and a compendium of comparative syllabi. Issues of information access, online databases, electronic journal publishing, electronic resource sharing, and community building, among others, are addressed both qualitatively and quantitatively, as revealed by the 'Safundi' example. The authors also set this case study within a historical context and suggest ways that the journal - and Africa-related electronic scholarship, more broadly - may further develop in the immediate future. Notes, ref., sum. in English and French.