William Bissell

Special interests: cities and space; modernity; social theory; film and media; globalization; power and inequality; colonialism; historical anthropology; Africa

Books

• Social Memory, Silenced Voices, and Political Struggle: Remembering the Revolution in Zanzibar. William Bissell and Marie-Aude Fouéré, eds. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota/IFRA, 2018.
• Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar.  Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.

Work in Progress

• “Monsoon Metropolis: Migration, Mobility, and Mediation in the Western Indian Ocean.” In Toyin Falola, R. Joseph Parrott, and Danielle Sanchez, eds, African Islands: Leading Edges of Empire and Globalization, forthcoming from Rochester University Press.

Other Selected Publications:

• “The Modern Life of Swahili Stonetowns.”  In The Swahili World, Stephanie Wynne-Jones and Adria LaViolette, eds., London and New York: Routledge, 2018.
• “Design and Temporality: Provocation.” Correspondences, Cultural Anthropology website, June 6, 2016. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/886-design-and-temporality-provocation, accessed 3 October 2018.
• “From ‘Progress’ to Post-colonial Relics: Modernist Architecture and Design in Africa.” In The Modernist World. Stephen Ross and Allana C. Lindgren, eds. New York: Routledge, 2015.
• “On Anthropology’s Nostalgia: Looking Back/Seeing Ahead.” In Anthropology and Nostalgia, Olivia Angé and David Berliner, eds. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015.
• “From Dhow Culture to the Diaspora: ZIFF, Film, and the Framing of Transnational Imaginaries in the Western Indian Ocean.” Social Dynamics 38(3):479-498 (2013).
• “Burning the Mabanda: Incendiary Acts, Interpretive Frames, and Iconoclash in the Indian Ocean,” African Arts 45(3):70-83 (2012).
• “When the Film Festival Comes to (Down)Town: Transnational Circuits, Tourism, and the Urban Economy of Images.” In Global Downtowns, Marina Peterson and Gary W. McDonough, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
• “Urban Sustainability at the Limits: Development Rhetorics and Realities in Tanzania.” Development 54(3):317-324 (2011).
• “Between Fixity and Fantasy: Assessing the Spatial Impact of Colonial Urban Dualism.” Journal of Urban History 37(2):208–229 (2011).
• “From Iraq to Katrina and Back: Bureaucratic Planning as Strategic Failure, Fiction, and Fantasy.” Sociology Compass 2 (5):1431–1461 (2008).
• “Casting a Long Shadow: Colonial Categories, Cultural Identities, and Cosmopolitan Spaces in Globalizing Africa.” African Identities 5(2): 181-197 (2007).
• “Engaging Colonial Nostalgia.” Cultural Anthropology 20(2): 215-248 (May 2005).
• “Camera Zanzibar.” In Alternative Modernities. Dilip P. Gaonkar, ed.  Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
• “Conservation and the Colonial Past: Urban Planning, Space, and Power in Zanzibar.” In Africa’s Urban Past. David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone, eds. Oxford: James Currey, 2000.
• “Colonial Constructions: Historicizing Debates on Civil Society in Africa.” In Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa. John L. and Jean Comaroff, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Courses

• Anthropology of the City
• Theories of Society
• African Modernities
• Cultural Anthropology
• Medical Anthropology
• Film, Media, and Popular Culture in Africa
• Global Food