New Books in African Studies

Interviews with Scholars of Africa about their New BooksSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Recent Episodes

Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024)
Apr 26, 2025 – 54:38
Las G. Newman, "To Die in Africa’s Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century" (Langham, 2024)
Apr 24, 2025 – 01:32:52
Bianca Murillo, "Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2017)
Apr 23, 2025 – 01:14:48
Chitra Nagarajan, "The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict" (Cassava Republic, 2025)
Apr 18, 2025 – 01:17:40
Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century" (Duke UP, 2024)
Apr 15, 2025 – 01:05:34
Les Sosnowski and Monique Sosnowski, "Operation Crevette: Benin, Mercenaries, and the Survival of a New State" (Lexington Books, 2024)
Apr 11, 2025 – 01:49:04
Katherine Hallemeier, "African Literature and US Empire: Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Apr 4, 2025 – 41:51
Tycho van der Hoog, "Comrades Beyond the Cold War: North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa" (Hurst, 2025)
Mar 16, 2025 – 43:30
William Blakemore Lyon, "Forged in Genocide: Migrant Workers Shaping Colonial Capitalism in Namibia, 1890-1925" (de Gruyter, 2024)
Mar 15, 2025 – 01:29:12
Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023)
Mar 5, 2025 – 45:04
Alexander Smalls and Nina Oduro, "The Contemporary African Kitchen: Home Cooking Recipes from the Leading Chefs of Africa" (Phaidon Press, 2024)
Feb 28, 2025 – 24:33
Philip A. Martin, "Strong Commanders, Weak States: How Rebel Governance Shapes Military Integration after Civil War" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Feb 26, 2025 – 01:06:01
Kara Cooney, "Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches" (American U in Cairo Press, 2024)
Feb 23, 2025 – 55:24
Rhiannon Stephens, "Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History" (Duke UP, 2022)
Feb 22, 2025 – 49:53
Lindsay O'Neill, "The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey Into and Out of Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
Feb 21, 2025 – 49:27
Samar Al-Bulushi, "War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Feb 17, 2025 – 01:08:44
Raphael Chijioke Njoku, "Queen Elizabeth II and the Africans: Narrating Decolonization, Postwar Commonwealth, and Africa’s Development, 1947-2022" (Leuven UP, 2024)
Feb 16, 2025 – 01:09:12
Frank Gerits, "The Ideological Scramble for Africa: How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity Shaped a Postcolonial Order, 1945-1966" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Feb 12, 2025 – 59:59
A. G. Hopkins, "Capitalism in the Colonies: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851–1931" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Jan 30, 2025 – 54:37
Rachel Marie Niehuus, "An Archive of Possibilities: Healing and Repair in Democratic Republic of Congo" (Duke UP, 2024)
Jan 28, 2025 – 01:08:26
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, "Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement" (Duke UP, 2023)
Jan 27, 2025 – 01:09:26
Casey Golomski, "God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
Jan 22, 2025 – 01:12:32
Benjamin H. Bradlow, "Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Jan 13, 2025 – 51:47
Jonathan R. Beloff, "The Strategy to End the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda" (Lexington Books, 2025)
Jan 9, 2025 – 01:23:16
Caitlín Eilís Barrett, "Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Jan 8, 2025 – 01:42:22
Emily Marker, "Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Jan 5, 2025 – 01:08:37
Nicholas R. Jones, "Cervantine Blackness" (Penn State UP, 2024)
Dec 30, 2024 – 56:53
Fela Kuti and the Black Atlantic
Dec 30, 2024 – 01:20:57
Chelsea Berry, "Poisoned Relations: Healing, Power, and Contested Knowledge in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Dec 20, 2024 – 43:33
Anne K. Bang, "Zanzibari Muslim Moderns: Islamic Paths to Progress in the Interwar Period" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Dec 18, 2024 – 01:06:10
Leila Ullrich, "Victims and the Labour of Justice at the International Criminal Court: The Blame Cascade" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Dec 18, 2024 – 01:03:20
Kenny Cupers, "The Earth That Modernism Built: Empire and the Rise of Planetary Design" (U Texas Press, 2024)
Dec 17, 2024 – 01:21:28
Joanna Allan, "Saharan Winds: Energy Systems and Aeolian Imaginaries in Western Sahara" (WVU Press, 2024)
Dec 17, 2024 – 49:06
Nathanael Homewood, "Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanaian Pentecostalism" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Dec 15, 2024 – 01:04:36
Emanuela Trevisan Semi, "Taamrat Emmanuel: An Ethiopian Jewish Intellectual, Between Colonized and Colonizers" (Centro Primo Levi, 2018)
Dec 14, 2024 – 01:38:27
Ana Lucia Araujo, "Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Dec 12, 2024 – 01:14:23
Meredith McKittrick, "Green Lands for White Men: Desert Dystopias and the Environmental Origins of Apartheid" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Dec 10, 2024 – 01:03:07
Marlene L. Daut, "The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe" (Knopf, 2025)
Dec 8, 2024 – 01:10:49
Caroline Séquin, "Desiring Whiteness: A Racial History of Prostitution in France and Colonial Senegal, 1848-1950" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Nov 29, 2024 – 01:40:21
Beverly Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick, "New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization" (UP of Florida, 2017)
Nov 24, 2024 – 53:49
Roberta Pergher, "Mussolini's Nation-Empire: Sovereignty and Settlement in Italy's Borderlands, 1922–1943" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
Nov 22, 2024 – 01:14:02
Samuel Fury Childs Daly, "Soldier's Paradise: Militarism in Africa After Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)
Nov 16, 2024 – 53:59
Amín Pérez, "Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle" (Polity Press, 2023)
Nov 9, 2024 – 38:34
Anette Hoffmann, "Knowing by Ear: Listening to Voice Recordings with African Prisoners of War in German Camps (1915–1918)" (Duke UP, 2024)
Nov 9, 2024 – 44:41
Doyle D. Calhoun, "The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)
Nov 6, 2024 – 01:13:07
Mara Kardas-Nelson, "We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance" (Metropolitan Books, 2024)
Nov 5, 2024 – 45:54
Mirin Fader, "Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon" (Hachette, 2024)
Nov 2, 2024 – 46:32
Corey Ross, "Liquid Empire: Water and Power in the Colonial World" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Oct 17, 2024 – 01:22:34
Christian Velasco, "Commercial Banking in Kenya: A History from Colonisation to Digital Age" (Routledge, 2024)
Oct 15, 2024 – 56:25
Sharad Chari, "Apartheid Remains" (Duke UP, 2024)
Oct 13, 2024 – 01:20:32

Recent Reviews

Keahileo

Colonial, White Perspective

Just listened to the podcast episode called “The Future of Africa: a Discussion with James A Robinson” and it was the most colonial, white-supremist perspective I’ve ever heard of. James A Robinson needs to read “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney and stop acting like it’s Africa’s fault for not having technological and societal advancements in the same way Europe & Asia did. Any “advancement”Europe had was not just happenstance, but entirely because of the domination and extraction of Africa’s labor, resources, women, & economy via the European Slave Trade.
T Drinker

Max Siollun’s book interview!

Max Siollun carried the interview, he was both enthusiastic and current. I can’t wait to read his latest book “What Britain did to Nigeria.”
JasonByrne film

Excellent podcast

This is an excellent podcast. Always interesting book topics and insightful q
Kioriki

Great ideas!

Great podcast that delves deep into contemporary and historic Africa!