Adam LoBue (History) is a 2023–2024 HRI Graduate Fellow. LoBue’s project, “‘Preventive, Pre-emptive and Educative’: Political Literacy, Anti- Communism, and Cold War Knowledge Production in East Africa, 1948–1975,” examines the intellectual and cultural work of anti/communist print culture in East Africa between 1949–1979.
Learn more about HRI’s Campus Fellowship Program, which supports a cohort of faculty and graduate students through a year of dedicated research and writing in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.
What is unique about your research on this topic?
My research on this topic is unique in that I am utilizing archival documents that have only recently begun to be declassified and made available to researchers. Previously, available archival materials on British anticommunist propaganda work were restricted to Eastern and Western Europe; when Africans or others from the Global South were featured, it was only within those geographic contexts. The recent availability of new documents gives researchers a glimpse into how this work unfolded in East Africa and elsewhere across the decolonizing and postcolonial world. As I argue in my dissertation, these files reveal that much British anticommunist work was, in fact, driven by East African subjects and their desires and tastes, rather than being imposed by British propagandists themselves.
What drives your interest in this research?
One of my main interests in pursuing my topic is to inscribe African agency into histories of the Cold War. In both historical and contemporary coverage of Africa, the continent and its peoples are often presented as having policies and discourses thrust upon them by outside actors. One of the core arguments of my research is that, in this context, African readers, students, workers, and others were the ones driving political and publishing policies of British propagandists.
At the risk of dabbling in “presentism,” another part of what drives my interest in research on propaganda, disinformation, and censorship is that these topics are increasingly prominent in contemporary political discourse. Since 2016 especially, these issues have become part of everyday lived experience in ways that are reminiscent of the Cold War era and are thus topics of conversation beyond academia. Similarly, the recent increase in scrutiny and banning of texts by school boards across the country and, indeed, the world, has clear overlap with comparable practices in Cold War East Africa. A core concern of my research is to show how these issues have been present throughout history in different social and geographical contexts. Not only does this add a degree of contemporary relevance to my work, but it also helps students make connections between current and historical examples of propaganda and disinformation, as well as to think critically about the increasing scrutiny of the kinds of texts used, or banned, in educational institutions today.
How has the fellowship seminar impacted the way you approach your research?
The HRI seminar has helped me incorporate perspectives and methodologies into my work outside those of my primary discipline. It is all too easy in academic work to wear disciplinary blinders that end up siloing scholarship within overly rigid academic boundaries. Receiving feedback and insight from colleagues outside of History allows me to expand on the tools I use to analyze my research subjects and critically reflect on the questions I use to orient my research. From a slightly more self-serving standpoint, presenting my work to colleagues in other disciplines is a helpful exercise for how to pitch my work to publishers and other non-specialist audiences.