New Books in African Studies

Interviews with Scholars of Africa about their New Books

Society & Culture
Places & Travel
626
Nic Cheeseman, “Institutions and Democracy in A...
In Institutions and Democracy in Africa: How the Rules of the Game Shape Political Developments (Cambridge University Press, 2018), the contributors challenge the argument that African states lack effective political institutions as these have been und...
35 min
627
Bonny Ibhawoh, “Human Rights in Africa” (Cambri...
In his new book, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Bonny Ibhawoh examines the discourse of human rights in Africa. He challenges some of the dominant narratives that focus on ruthless violators and benevolent activists.
92 min
628
John Broich, “Squadron: Ending the African Slav...
Despite the British being early abolitionists, a significant slave trade remained in the western Indian Ocean through the mid-1800s, even after the cessation of most imperial slave trading activities in the Atlantic World.
30 min
629
Jennifer Hart, “Ghana on the Go: African Mobili...
Our guest today was Dr. Jennifer Hart who talked to us about her recently published book Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation (Indiana University Press, 2016). In this book, Dr.
57 min
630
Christopher J. Lee, “Soviet Journey: A Critical...
Kimberly speaks with Dr. Christopher J. Lee about his newest book A Soviet Journey: A Critical Annotated Edition (Lexington Books, 2017). A Soviet Journey was a travel memoir written by South African writer and anti-apartheid activist, Alex La Guma.
56 min
631
Seth Markle, “A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzani...
Today we talked to Seth Markle about his book, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974, published by Michigan State University Press in 2017 as part of the Ruth Simms Hamilton African Diaspo...
50 min
632
Kim Yi Dionne, “Doomed Interventions: The Failu...
AIDS is one of the primary causes of death in Africa. Of the more than 24 million Africans infected with HIV, only about 54% have access to the treatment that they need. Despite the progress made in mitigating this disease in the global north,
40 min
633
Alexander Thurston, “Boko Haram: The History of...
Boko Haram is one of the most well known global terrorist organizations. They have killed thousands of people and displaced millions of West Africans. While widespread journalistic reporting on the group tries to keep up with their activities,
46 min
634
Claire Eldridge, “From Empire to Exile” (Manche...
The French-Algerian War that erupted in 1954 ended with the emergence of an independent Algeria in 1962, but it was not until decades later that a broader French public turned its attention with vigor to the violence and pain of that conflict. Indeed,
57 min
635
Samuel Totten, “Sudan’s Nuba Mountains People U...
This podcast is usually devoted to book written about the past. The authors may be historians, or political scientists, or anthropologists, or even a member of the human rights community. But we’re almost always talking about a mass atrocity that took ...
65 min
636
Herman Salton, “Dangerous Diplomacy: Bureaucrac...
I was in graduate school during Bosnia and Rwanda. Like everyone else, I watched the video footage and journalistic accounts that came from these two zones of atrocity. Like everyone else, I wondered how humans could do such things to each other.
83 min
637
Randy M. Browne, “Surviving Slavery in the Brit...
Randy M. Browne in Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) uses the overlooked archives of the fiscal, a legal legacy from Dutch colonialism, and protector of slaves to reveal the political dynamics of slaver...
48 min
638
Jessica Marglin, “Across Legal Lines: Jews and ...
In Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016), Jessica Marglin skillfully narrates how Jews and Muslims navigated the complex and dynamic legal system of pre-colonial Morocco. The book,
51 min
639
Michel Leiris, “Phantom Africa” (Seagull Books,...
Between 1931 and 1933, French writer Michel Leiris participated in a state-sponsored expedition to document the cultural practices of people in west and east Africa. The Mission Dakar-Djibouti employed some questionable,
76 min
640
Hilary Matfess, “Women and the War on Boko Hara...
Today we talked with Hilary Matfess about her new book Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses, just recently published by Zed Books in 2017. Drawn from her extensive research and interviews from 2015 to 2017,
42 min
641
Sowande Mustakeem, “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex...
Most scholars and members of the public believe the process of enslavement was confined to the Western Hemispheric plantation or other locations of enslavement. Sowande Mustakeem’s award-winning Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex,
46 min
642
Marie Grace Brown, “Khartoum at Night: Fashion ...
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fashion in Sudan, but in so many ways, its much more than that. It is the story of women in Sudan,
49 min
643
Padraic Scanlan, “Freedom’s Debtors: British An...
What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2017),
73 min
644
Stephane Robolin, “Grounds of Engagement: Apart...
Writers have long created networks and connections by exchanging letters or writing back to one another in their poetry and fiction. Letters between Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes,
56 min
645
Sara E. Brown, “Gender and the Genocide in Rwan...
Thanks to Scott Straus, Leanne Fujii and others, we know quite a bit about how men behaved during the genocide in Rwanda. But we know surprisingly little about women’s actions during that crisis. Sara Brown begins to remedy this in her excellent new st...
64 min
646
Gregory Mann, “From Empires to NGOs in the West...
Today we spoke to Gregory Mann about his book From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Non-Governmentality (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Gregory Mann investigates how the effectiveness of government institutions declined in the...
53 min
647
Keren Weitzberg, “We Do Not Have Borders: Great...
Somalis have lived in Kenya for generations, in many cases since long before the founding of the country. Yet, Kenyan officials and citizens often perceive them as a dangerous and alien presence, with attendant civil and human rights abuses.
2 min
648
Regine Jean-Charles, “Conflict Bodies: The Poli...
Regine Jean-Charles’ Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014) foregrounds black women as speaking subjects in narrating and protesting sexual violence.
41 min
649
Anne C. Bailey, “The Weeping Time: Memory and t...
Contemporary conversations and debates over Confederate monuments underline how memory-making and the legacies of U.S. slavery and the Civil War remains raw and highly contested in public discourse. In her new book,
42 min
650
Joanna Dee Das, “Katherine Dunham: Dance and th...
By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford University Press,
46 min