Colonialism in both its traditional and contemporary versions is not just about power and coercion: it's about how the "other" is thought and talked about. Aimé Césaire took a radical anticolonial stance inflected with surrealist and Marxist notions. Robin D. G. Kelley discusses Césaire's ideas and their relevance today.

A government in name only. A protracted conflict with a hard-line Islamist group. A severe drought and famine, and thousands of people on the move. Ben Rawlence has written a penetrating report about the tumultuous situation in Somalia, and the toll it's taken on civilians. Also, the celebrated solo performer Anna Deavere Smith talks about her new show.

Does black feminist literary study have any business examining the canonical works of dead white male authors? Ann duCille thinks it does. A short story by Ernest Hemingway, although set in Africa, is dominated by the actions and thoughts of three white characters. DuCille offers a critique of that story, "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber," bringing to the fore considerations of race, gender, and class.

Huge tracts of fertile land in Africa are being gobbled up, not by Africans but by foreign investors with deep pockets. Many African governments, in cahoots with the World Bank, are doing all they can to encourage these land deals, but the consequences for ordinary Africans and the environment are staggering. Joan Baxter has done extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mali and Sierra Leone.

One man once had a vast African colony all to himself. How he secured it, what happened to the Africans who called that territory home, and how an international human rights movement emerged to oppose the King of Belgium and his ruthless agenda -- all of it is described in Adam Hochschild's book King Leopold's Ghost.

This December, the United Nations will meet in Copenhagen to hash out an agreement on global warming, while activists from around the world will amass to demand more radical responses. South Africa-based scholar Patrick Bond talks about carbon trading, the ecological debt owed to Africa, and why a bad agreement in Copenhagen would be worse than no agreement at all.