Transition Magazine
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Transition Magazine, founded by Rajat Neogy (1938–1995), a Ugandan of Indian ancestry, was published from 1961 to 1976 on the African continent and was revived in 1991 in the United States. Born in Africa and bred in the Diaspora, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling, most curious ideas about race. Since its founding in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the black world and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate.
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[edit] History
In 1961, at the age of twenty-two, Neogy founded Transition Magazine: An International Review in Kampala, Uganda. Transition was designed to be the literary organ of East African writers and intellectuals. Transition quickly became Africa's leading intellectual magazine, publishing such diverse figures as Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer (Nobel laureate), Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, and Americans James Baldwin and Paul Theroux.
In 1968, the Ugandan government jailed Neogy for sedition; the magazine had criticized President Milton Obote's proposed constitutional reforms. After Neogy's release, Transition was revived in Ghana in 1971. Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka took over as editor in 1973. During Soyinka's tenure, Transition became still more contentious: the cover of one issue sported a cartoon image of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, with Karasi! ("Finish Him!") written across his face. Transition continued to make a name - as well as enemies - for itself until folding in 1976 for financial reasons.
[edit] Today
Henry Louis Gates, Jr, a student of Soyinka at Cambridge University and a frequent contributor to the Ghanaian Transition, brought the magazine back to life in 1991. Now based at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, Transition bills itself as "an anchor of deep reflection on black life and a map charting new routes through the globalized world." In 2011, Transition celebrates 50 years since the journal's founding.
Transition is edited by Tommie Shelby and Glenda Carpio of Harvard University and Vincent Brown (historian) of Duke University. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw of University of Pennsylvania serves as Visual Arts Editor. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah are the magazine's publishers, with Wole Soyinka serving as Chairman of the Editorial Board. Transition is published three times annually by Indiana University Press.
