Allen, James A.
2000 Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Battestini, Simon
2000 African Writing and Text. Brooklyn (NY), Ottawa, Toronto: Legas Publishing. Translated by Henri Evans from Simon Battestini, Écriture et texte: contribution africaine (ibid.).

Boone, Elizabeth Hill and Walter D. Mignolo (eds.)
1994 Writing without words: alternative literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham (NC): Duke University Press.

Bravmann, René
1983 African Islam. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press; London: Ethnographica.

Brett-Smith, Sarah C.
1982b "Symbolic Blood: Cloths for Excised Women," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 3: 15-31.
1984 "Speech Made Visible: The Irregular as a System of Meaning," Empirical Studies of the Arts 2 (3): 127-47.

Dalby, David
1986 Africa and the Written Word. Lagos (Nigeria): Centre Culturel Français; Paris: Fête de la Lettre.
1995 "An Inspired Invention," Unesco Courier, Paris (April): 22-23.

Drucker, Johanna
1995b The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination. New York: Thames and Hudson.
1998a Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing and Visual Poetics. New York: Granary Books.

Fabian, Johannes
1986 Language and colonial power: the appropriation of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.
1996 Remembering the Present: Painting and the Popular History of Zaire. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.

Faïk-Nzuji, Clémentine M.
1992 Symboles graphiques en Afrique noire. Paris: Karthala.

Goody, Jack
1986 The Llogic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
1987 The Interface between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
2000 The Power of the Written Tradition. Washington, D.C., and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Gundaker, Grey
1998 Signs of Diaspora, Diaspora of Signs. Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press.

Gundaker, Grey and Judith McWillie
2005 No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work. Knoxville (TN): University of Tennessee Press.

Kubik, Gerhard
1986 "African Graphic Systems," Muntu (4-5), January: 71-137.

Martin, Henri-Jean
1994 The History and Power of Writing. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.

Mafundikwa, Saki
2004 Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika. New York: Mark Batty Publisher.

Mitchell, W.J.T.
1994 Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.

Morley, Simon
2003 Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.

Ottenberg, Simon
2002 Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Prussin, Labelle
1986 Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.

Roberts, Mary Nooter
1993 Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals. New York: The Museum for African Art; Munich: Prestel.

Roberts, Allen F. and Mary Nooter Roberts
2003 A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal. Washington: University of Washington Press; Los Angeles (CA): UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

Roberts, Mary Nooter and Allen F. Roberts (eds.)
1996 Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History. New York: The Museum for African Art; Munich: Prestel.

Thompson, Robert Farris
1981 The Four Moments of the Sun. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art.
1983 Flash of the Spirit. New York: Random House. 1993 Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas. New York: Museum for African Art; Munich: Prestel.