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New Books in African Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow

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All Episodes

49:02

William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/05/10

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and author of Dibia's World.: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation (Liverpool UP, 2023). William discusses the importance of names, voice and the community life of a hundred slaves on an early sugar plantation.Dibia's World follows the story of Dibia, an educated man in Africa, stolen across the sea and sold into slavery. He

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61:07

Yolanda Aixelà-Cabré, "Spain’s African Colonial...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/05/04

The African cities of Bata and Al-Hoceima were created during the Spanish colonial rule of Equatorial Guinea and Morocco. Spain’s African Colonial Legacies: Morocco and Equatorial Guinea Compared (Brill, 2022) constructs their local history to analyse how Spanish colonialism worked, what its legacies were and the imprints it left on their national histories. The work explains the revision of collective memories of the past in the present as a form of decolonisation that seeks to build different

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54:58

Aaron Robertson, "The Black Utopians: Searching for...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/05/02

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born,

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39:47

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/27

An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the world’s rare and vanishing languages, revealing how each is a living testament to human resilience, adaptability, and the perennial quest for identity

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54:38

Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/26

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary open-access study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of contested witnessing, where competing narratives threaten, uphold, or reimagine migrant rights. Focusing on Italy, a crucial port of arrival, Dr. Paynter

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92:52

Las G. Newman, "To Die in Africa’s Dust: West Indian...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/24

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This

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74:48

Bianca Murillo, "Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/23

In Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Ohio UP, 2017), Bianca Murillo explores the shifting social terrains that made the buying and selling of goods in modern Ghana possible. Fusing economic and business history with social and cultural history, she traces the evolution of consumerism in the colonial Gold Coast and independent Ghana from the late nineteenth century through to the political turmoil of the 1970s. Murillo brings sales clerks, market women, and everyday

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77:40

Chitra Nagarajan, "The World Was in Our Hands: Voices...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/18

The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict (Cassava Republic Press, 2025) is a moving, often provocative, and ultimately vital collection of first hand accounts of people living through the Boko Haram conflict. From abducted girls to brash soldiers, and from community leaders to simple fishermen, this collection provides an insight into the realities of those living through the conflict, making this an essential cultural archive. The World Was in Our Hands covers themes of

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65:34

Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism:...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/15

In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial capitalism in the twenty-first century. Through fieldwork in one of the “China malls” that has emerged along Johannesburg’s former mining belt, Huang identifies everyday relations of power and difference between Chinese entrepreneurs and African migrant workers in these wholesale shops. These relations, Huang contends, replicate and perpetuate global

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109:04

Les Sosnowski and Monique Sosnowski, "Operation...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/11

Freshly out from under French colonial rule in 1960, the West African nation of Dahomey (now Benin) became home to the largest number of coups d’état in history, earning the reputation of the “sick child of Africa.” Country politics eventually aligned with Marxist and socialist ideologies stimulating French opposition that resulted in mercenary intervention. Opération Crevette: Benin, Mercenaries, and the Survival of a New State (Lexington Books, 2024) brings together the voices of the involved

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41:51

Katherine Hallemeier, "African Literature and US...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/04/04

African Literature and US Empire Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing (Edinburgh UP, 2024) demonstrates how African literature grapples with the enforced optimism of US empire that circulates in postcolonial nations:Unsettles chronologies that chart a growing disillusionment with the postcolonial nation and national development across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Brings together African literary studies, affect studies, and U.S. empire studies Diagnoses and

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43:30

Tycho van der Hoog, "Comrades Beyond the Cold War:...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/03/16

North Korea was an important player in the decolonisation of Africa. Freedom fighters across the continent received vital assistance from Pyongyang, and almost all southern African independence leaders travelled to the North Korean capital at some point, in search of support. This alliance has continued into the twenty-first century, with African postcolonial governments throwing a lifeline to Pyongyang’s increasingly isolated economy by hiring North Korean companies, despite United Nations

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89:12

William Blakemore Lyon, "Forged in Genocide: Migrant...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/03/15

Forged in Genocide traces the early history of colonial capitalism in Namibia with a central focus on migrants who came to be key to the economy during and as a result of the German genocide of the Herero and Nama (1904-1908). It posits that Namibia, far from being a colonial backwater of the early 20th century, became highly integrated into the labor flows and economies of West and Southern Africa, and even for a time was one of the most sought-after regions for African migrants because of

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45:04

Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/03/05

This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped shape the new imperial order in Africa.Richard Dorsey Mohun spent his career circulating among the eastern United States, the cities and courts of Europe, and the African continent, as he served the US State Department at some points and King Leopold of Belgium at others. A freelance imperialist, he implemented the schemes of American investors and the

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24:33

Alexander Smalls and Nina Oduro, "The Contemporary...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/02/28

The Contemporary African Kitchen: Home Cooking Recipes from the Leading Chefs of Africa (Phaidon Press, 2024) is an elegant collection of 120 home cooking recipes from Africa’s most exciting culinary voices today. Extensively researched and thoughtfully curated by James Beard Award winning chef, author, and restaurateur Alexander Smalls in collaboration with Dine Diaspora CEO Nina Oduro, this bold volume celebrates Africa’s extraordinary gastronomic past and present across a breadth of dishes.

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66:01

Philip A. Martin, "Strong Commanders, Weak States:...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/02/26

In Strong Commanders, Weak States: How Rebel Governance Shapes Military Integration after Civil War (Cornell University Press, 2025), Dr. Philip A. Martin investigates a fundamental political challenge faced by post-conflict states: how to create obedient national militaries from the remnants of insurgent forces.When civil wars end, non-state armed groups often integrate into post-conflict militaries. Yet rebel-military integration does not always happen smoothly. In some cases, former rebels

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55:24

Kara Cooney, "Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/02/23

Today I talked to Kara Cooney about Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches (American U in Cairo Press, 2024). The book is a meticulous study of the social, economic, and religious significance of coffin reuse and development during the Ramesside and early Third Intermediate periods, illustrated with over 900 images. Funerary datasets are the chief source of social history in Egyptology, and the numerous tombs, coffins, Books of the Dead, and mummies of the

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49:53

Rhiannon Stephens, "Poverty and Wealth in East...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/02/22

In Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History (Duke UP, 2022), Rhiannon Stephens offers a conceptual history of how people living in eastern Uganda have sustained and changed their ways of thinking about wealth and poverty over the past two thousand years. This history serves as a powerful reminder that colonialism and capitalism did not introduce economic thought to this region and demonstrates that even in contexts of relative material equality between households, people invested

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49:27

Lindsay O'Neill, "The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/02/21

In 1716 two princes from Mpfumo—what is today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique—boarded a ship licensed by the East India Company bound for England. Instead, their perfidious captain sold them into slavery in Jamaica. After two years of pleading their case, the princes—known in the historical record as Prince James and Prince John—convinced a lawyer to purchase them, free them, and travel with them to London. The lawyer perished when a hurricane wrecked their ship, but the princes survived and

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68:44

Samar Al-Bulushi, "War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya,...

New Books in African Studies ·

2025/02/17

Since Kenya's invasion of Somalia in 2011, the Kenyan state has been engaged in direct combat with the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab, conducting airstrikes in southern Somalia and deploying heavy-handed police tactics at home. As the hunt for suspects has expanded within Kenya, Kenyan Muslims have been subject to disappearances and extrajudicial killings at the hands of U.S.-trained Kenyan police.War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University

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173 results

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