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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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01:00:51

The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck,...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/10/03

This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa(U California Press, 2025)tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West

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00:29:23

Compromised Coalitions: The Paradox of Postconflict...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/29

When an election turns violent and neither side will concede, why is the usual answer to put both sides in the same government?Alex Noyes has spent nearly two decades asking whether that reflex works. Compromised Coalitions: The Paradox of Post-Conflict Power Sharing in Africaout in 2026 from the University of Pennsylvania Press, draws on more than 120 interviews with senior politicians and stakeholders in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Togo to give an unsettling answer.Power sharing can advance democratic

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00:42:41

Karline McLain, "Living with Gandhi: Experiments in...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/24

Mahatma Gandhi was an anticolonial activist, lawyer, and politician. Less famously, but no less importantly, he was also a back-to-the-land farmer, a founder of communes, and a seeker of utopia. Living with Gandhi: Experiments in Utopia tells the story of everyday life at four of Gandhi's communities in India and South Africa. It explores who lived at each community alongside Gandhi, the experiments they undertook in the shared pursuit of universal wellbeing, and the connections that were forged

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00:36:16

James A Harmon et al., "A Daring Enterprise: The US,...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/23

What happens when the United States launches an unconventional foreign aid program in the aftermath of a national uprising? In this behind-the-scenes account of the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund--a private investment fund created by the U.S. Congress to jumpstart Egypt's private sector after the 2011 Egyptian revolution--A Daring Enterprise: A Us-Egyptian Partnership and the Case for Soft Power (American University in Cairo Press, 2026)by James A Harmon, Cornelius Queen, and Mark Warrentells

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00:54:34

Emmanuel Y. Lartey, "Spiritual Care in African...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/20

In my conversation with Prof. Emmanuel Y. Lartey about his new book,Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures: Sacred Wisdom for the Care of Persons in an Intercultural World, published by Georgetown University Press in 2026.Our conversation highlighted the importance of taking African religious worlds seriously, not merely as objects of academic study but as rich sources of knowledge about care, healing, suffering, community, spirituality, and human flourishing.Prof. Lartey’s work challenges

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42:46

Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/12

At its core, China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a book about power, journalism, geopolitical influence, and knowledge production in China–Africa relations. It examines how the People’s Republic of China has moved beyond simply establishing Chinese media organizations such as Xinhua and CGTN in Africa toward a much more dispersed system of engagement. Conceptualizing these engagements collectively as a multimodal or mixed-media ecology of

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42:19

Debarati Sanyal, "Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/12

Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges (Fordham, 2025) investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they continue to produce. Through recent narratives and media representations of the refugee “crisis” at Europe’s edges, it tells a new story about those on the move, the technologies unleashed on them at borders, the racialized and colonial histories that inform these technologies, and the artistry with which migrants and allies bear

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63:49

Janaka Jayawickrama and Jerome Wright, "Under the...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/06

What went wrong with global mental health?Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection(Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)critically examines how the globalisation of mental health through the dominant medical model has created barriers to understanding and responding to distress with reference to cases from Malawi and Sri Lanka. Its authors argue that mental health must be understood within the overall health of an individual, and individual health is located within the social, political,

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41:24

Meghan Garrity, "Mass Expulsion: The Politics of...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/09/05

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion remains an understudied phenomenon as scholarly attention has been directed toward the gravest atrocities—genocide and mass killing—or toward forced migration more broadly. Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal(Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Meghan Garrity examines why and how governments expel, providing a

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44:52

Karin Barber, "Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/31

Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos,1910-1930(Ohio UP, 2026)is a survey of the history and development of Yoruba print culture in Lagos, Nigeria, from the 19th to the early 20th century. The book details the emergence of the Yoruba language press, its themes, and its distinction from the English-language press. The influence of both missionary and secular presses on religion and morality as well as the socio-economic and political lives of the Nigerian people are also

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44:01

Bernadette Ludwig, "Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/29

Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America (Rutgers University Press, 2025) is an ethnographic study of the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, New York, home to the largest per capita concentration of Liberians in the U.S., that sheds light on the racialization of Black refugees and the racism they have experienced at every step of their migration journey. In this pioneering study, sociologist Bernadette Ludwig explores how Liberians have responded to such racist exclusions, noting

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59:12

Courtney Weikle‑Mills, "Sugarcoated Ethics:...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/29

What if children’s literature was never as innocent as we imagine?InSugarcoated Ethics: Children’s Literature and Atlantic Enslavement(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), the relationship between childhood reading and Atlantic slavery is brought into sharp focus. The book argues that children’s literature did not merely emerge alongside the plantation economy; it was deeply shaped by it. Sugar, sweetness, moral instruction, and domestic comfort were all tied to systems of enslavement and

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68:36

Mhoze Chikowero, "The Military Entertainment Complex:...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/24

The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe(MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Mhoze Chikowero is the story of the making of post-independence Zimbabwe from the sounds and songs born of the country’s armed liberation wars, waged against British Rhodesian white settler rule since the 1890s.The war from 1896 through the twentieth century to resist the initial colonization, as well as the one waged to reclaim land from the colonial farmers in the 2000s, is known as Chimurenga, and

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47:16

Edward E. Andrews, "Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/17

Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America(Cornell UP, 2025)explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who went on to become one of early America's most important Black leaders.In the mid-eighteenth century, Marycoo was taken from West Africa to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was forced into racial bondage and given a name that symbolized the power that his new city and new enslaver held over him: Newport Gardner. In this

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97:08

Hossam el-Hamalawy, "Counterrevolution in Egypt:...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/14

Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic(Verso Books, 2026)is a rare and comprehensive examination of the structures, hierarchies, and methods of the military, police, and intelligence agencies. Drawing on meticulous research, it reveals the strategies deployed to suppress the revolutionary wave, from propaganda and surveillance to mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings. El-Hamalawy traces the power dynamics within these institutions to show how their uneasy unity was both a

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0:00

Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/05

"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which his father had fought. This is the story of his childhood journey through the chaos of that new country's birth to Britain, where he arrived alone, a teenager, burning with ambition but utterly lost in ways he had yet even to discover. Told with astonishing insight, his memoir describes the drama of his quest to belong and to succeed, and how

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51:35

Paulina Banas, "Visualizing Egypt: European Travel,...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/02

Following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East. In her debut book,Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth

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40:23

Thomas Richardson, "Soldiers and Bushmen: The...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/08/02

Soldiers and Bushmen: The Australian Army in South Africa, 1899–1902(Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Thomas Richardson examines the commitment to what was expected to be a short war. It presents a thematic, analytical history of the birth of the Australian Army in South Africa, while exploring the Army's evolution from colonial units into a consolidated federal force.Soldiers and Bushmeninvestigates the establishment of the 'bushmen experiment' – the belief that the unique qualities of rural Australians

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45:42

Samantha Iyer, "Agrarian Superpower: Food,...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/07/25

The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of the nineteenth century, which depended on its current and former colonies for food and raw materials, the United States produced vast agricultural surpluses. During the 1950s, an era of decolonization and rising Cold War

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61:26

Grégory Pierrot, "Fantômes de la révolution noire:...

New Books in African Studies ·

2026/07/24

Black Power! A name with a ringto it on both sides of the Atlantic, taken asasign of Black American rage incarnated by a few names:Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, Angela Davis. Behind these archetypes of the 1960s and 70s stood a political movement as mutable as it was international, that of Black Power, with the goal of bringing abouta global uprising. This insurrection of Black worlds has haunted the West for centuries, rumbling beneaththe words of Frantz Fanon and

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253 results

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