Podcast
New Books in African Studies
Episodes — page 24
- Erin C. MacLeod, "Visions of Zion: Ethiopians and Rastafari in the Search for the Promised Land" (NYU Press, 2014)
In reggae song after reggae song Bob Marley and other reggae singers speak of the Promised Land of Ethiopia. "Repatriation is a must!" they cry. The Rastafari have been travelling…
- Tony Perman, "Signs of the Spirit: Music and the Experience of Meaning in Ndau Ceremonial Life" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
In 2005, Tony Perman attended a ceremony alongside the living and the dead. His visit to a Zimbabwe farm brought him into contact with the madhlozi, outsider spirits that Ndau peop…
- Florian Wagner, "Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Today I talked to Florian Wagner about his new book Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982 (Cambridge UP, 2022). From its founding in 1893, to its d…
- Christopher Silver, "Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa" (Stanford UP, 2022)
Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa (Stanford UP, 2022) offers a new history of twentieth-century North Africa, one that gives voice t…
- Claire L. Wendland, "Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
A close look at stories of maternal death in Malawi that considers their implications in the broader arena of medical knowledge. By the early twenty-first century, about one woman…
- Mark Fathi Massoud, "Shari'a, Inshallah: Finding God in Somali Legal Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Western analysts have long denigrated Islamic states as antagonistic, even antithetical, to the rule of law. Mark Fathi Massoud tells a different story: for nearly 150 years, the S…
- Moses E. Ochonu, "Emirs in London: Subalteran Travel and Nigeria's Modernity" (Indiana UP, 2022)
Emirs in London: Subalteran Travel and Nigeria's Modernity (Indiana UP, 2022) recounts how Northern Nigerian Muslim aristocrats who traveled to Britain between 1920 and Nigerian in…
- Simidele Dosekun, "Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
Women in Lagos, Nigeria, practice a spectacularly feminine form of black beauty. From cascading hair extensions to immaculate makeup to high heels, their style permeates both day-t…
- Alison F. Richard, "Sloth Lemur's Song: Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Madagascar is a place of change. A biodiversity hotspot and the fourth largest island on the planet, it has been home to a spectacular parade of animals, from giant flightless bird…
- Martin Williams, "When the Sahara Was Green: How Our Greatest Desert Came to Be" (Princeton UP, 2021)
The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, equal in size to China or the United States. Yet, this arid expanse was once a verdant, pleasant land, fed by rivers and lakes. T…
- Evan Lieberman, "Until We Have Won Our Liberty: South Africa After Apartheid" (Princeton UP, 2022)
At a time when many democracies are under strain around the world, Until We Have Won Our Liberty: South Africa After Apartheid (Princeton UP, 2022) shines new light on the signal a…
- Ariela Marcus-Sells, "Sorcery or Science?: Contesting Knowledge and Practice in West African Sufi Texts" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)
In Sorcery or Science? Contesting Knowledge and Practice in West African Sufi Texts (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022) Ariela Marcus-Sells examines two Sufi Muslim the…
- Shoko Yamada, "Dignity of Labour for African Leaders: The Formation of Education Policy in the British Colonial Office and Achimota School" (Langaa RPCIG, 2018)
The Prince of Wales College, Achimota School, opened in 1927 north of Accra in the Gold Coast (Ghana). Achimota was to be a ‘model’ school—but a model of what, exactly? And for who…
- Adam Day, "States of Disorder, Ecosystems of Governance: Complexity Theory Applied to UN Statebuilding in the DRC and South Sudan" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Today's vision of world order is founded upon the concept of strong, well-functioning states, in contrast to the destabilizing potential of failed or fragile states. This worldview…
- Jacob Doherty, "Waste Worlds: Inhabiting Kampala's Infrastructures of Disposability" (U California Press, 2021)
Uganda's capital, Kampala, is undergoing dramatic urban transformations as its new technocratic government seeks to clean and green the city. Waste Worlds: Inhabiting Kampala's Inf…
- Paddy Docherty, "Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin" (Hurst, 2022)
The Benin Bronzes are among the British Museum’s most prized possessions. Celebrated for their great beauty, they embody the history, myth and artistry of the ancient Kingdom of Be…
- Sally Hayden, "My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route" (Melville House, 2022)
Late one night, journalist Sally Hayden received an urgent message on Facebook: “Sally, we need your help.” It was from a group of Eritrean refugees who had been held in a Libyan d…
- Sarah G. Phillips, "When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland" (Cornell UP, 2020)
For all of the doubts raised about the effectiveness of international aid in advancing peace and development, there are few examples of developing countries that are even relativel…
- Karen Samantha Barton, "Africa’s Joola Shipwreck: Causes and Consequences of a Humanitarian Disaster" (Lexington Books, 2020)
In 2002, a government-owned Senegalese ferry named the Joola capsized in a storm off the coast of The Gambia in a tragedy that killed 1,863 people and left 64 survivors, only one o…
- Isabel Hofmeyr, "Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House (Duke University Press, 2022), Isabel Hofmeyr traces the relationships among print culture, colonialism, and the ocean th…
