Jeremiah O. Arowosegbe’s essay ‘African universities and the challenge of postcolonial development’ sheds significant light on political and economic influences, freedom within academia, and the role of these institutions within wider socio-political contexts. I want to endorse some of his proposals and make additional suggestions to comprehend the complexities and potential directions of African universities.

In studies of violence against women and children during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as in explanations of men’s increased vulnerability to the disease, the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ regularly surfaces. However, direct research on men’s perspectives on the pandemic’s impact on them as men remains scarce. Drawing on interview data on urban Nigerian men’s lived experiences and narratives of the epidemic in relation to their identities and roles as men, I explore whether toxic masculinity was emblematic of men’s responses to the Covid-19 socio-economic crisis. While I found little evidence of the men’s reliance on toxic masculine practices to maintain their identities as men during the pandemic, their accounts revealed something quite significant: the reconstitution of masculine success in terms of the ability to adjust to the times by discontinuing practices that, while once essential to their identity as men, now threatened their image as capable providers. These adjustments, which frequently involved resorting to practices that would be considered unmanly, were constituted as part of the routine situational pivots that ‘real’ men must make, in keeping with their role as all-weather providers. I conclude with a reflection on how so-called non-heteronormative male performances might still mask gender inequalities and perpetuate certain aspects of patriarchal power.

Des monographies récentes témoignent du dynamisme de l’histoire transimpériale russo-ottomane contemporaine. L’étude des prisonniers de guerre, des réfugiés et des pèlerins permet notamment à trois jeunes historiens et historienne, Will Smiley, Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky et Lâle Can, d’offrir des perspectives neuves sur l’histoire d’institutions centrales de la modernité politique. Par l’exploitation de sources nouvelles, l’attention portée aux interactions entre acteurs étatiques et non étatiques, et aux pratiques ordinaires de gouvernement, comme par le décentrement des perspectives, ils tracent les contours d’un puissant renouvellement historiographique. Leur lecture croisée invite à interroger les dynamiques d’une co-construction d’ordres impériaux fondés sur des conceptions partagées de la souveraineté, de la sujétion et de la protection. Elle souligne l’imbrication systémique des projets de colonisation des deux empires, la centralité d’acteurs des marches impériales et la redéfinition complexe des affiliations et appartenances au cours de ces processus de modernisation souvent violents.