Podcast
New Books in African Studies
Episodes — page 3
- Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination
Jeremy Harding has long been one of the premier essayists and journalists of our day. Elegant, committed and free of cant, Harding's writing has often appeared in the London Review…
- D. Vance Smith, "Atlas’s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A major new look at Africa’s influence on European culture and how colonization remade Africa in the image of a medieval Europe. Virgil. Chaucer. Petrarch. These names resonate wit…
- Oil and Militancy in Nigeria: A Conversation with Noo Saro-Wiwa
Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and journalist. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, she attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York. Her fir…
- Michael W. Tuck, "The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World" (Brill, 2026)
In his new book, The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World (Brill, 2026) historian Dr. Michael W. Tuck examines life on Jam…
- Bimbola Akinbola, "Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art (Duke University Press, 2025), Bimbola Akinbola redirects the focus in diaspora studi…
- Stephen Onyango Ouma, "Africa Unbound: Decolonial Pathways to Sovereignty and Liberation" (Brill, 2026)
I had a substantive conversation with Dr. Stephen Onyango Ouma, author of Africa Unbound: Decolonial Pathways to Sovereignty and Liberation (Brill, 2026). He explained that, despit…
- Hilary Matfess, "After Liberation: Women and the Politics of Expectations in Rebel-to-Party Transitions" (Stanford UP, 2026)
War offers opportunities for women to liberate their communities and build a better life for themselves. When women join rebel groups, they often take on new roles, cultivate new s…
- Jeanne-Marie Jackson, "The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and British imperial literary and i…
- Emmanuel Ofuasia, "Ìwà: the Process-Relational Dimension to African Metaphysics" (Springer, 2024)
Correction: In the interview, the host mistakenly mentioned that Prof. Ofuasia is teaching the University of Pretoria. In reality, Prof Ofuasia is currently a decoloniality researc…
- Michael Allan, "Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers" (Fordham UP, 2026)
Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cine…
- Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" ( Columbia UP, 2026)
Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the forest to experiment with worldb…
- Nana Osei-Opare, "Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana's Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African…
- Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
What did slavery actually look like in the everyday lives of Jews in the medieval Middle East? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Craig Perry to discuss his…
- Maria A. Sanchez, "Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts" (Cornell UP, 2026)
In Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Maria A. Sanchez tackles a central tension in global governance: how international human rights…
- Lauren M. MacLean, "Negotiating Power and Inequality in Ghana: Electricity and Citizenship as Reciprocity (Indiana UP, 2026)
In Ghana, much as in other parts of the Global South, postcolonial leaders aimed for industrial growth through the establishment of affordable hydroelectric power. However, in the…
- Jessica Ann Levy, "Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics, (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), traces the rise of Black empowerment politics in the United S…
- Selina Nwulu, "Black Climates: Notes on Race, Our Environment, and Visions for Equitable Futures" (Chatto & Windus, 2025)
Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Globally, Black people are among the most affected by the climate crisis, despite contributing very litt…
- Sandra E. Greene, “Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition” (Indiana UP, 2017)
In today’s podcast we talked to Dr. Sandra Greene about her book Slave Owners of West Africa. Decision Making in the Age of Abolition published in 2017 by Indiana University Press.…
- Alice Wiemers, "Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2021)
Most development histories focus on large-scale projects and multi-year plans. But how would we understand development differently if we chose a different starting point? In Villag…
- Why Senegal’s Democracy Survived
In 2024, Senegal faced a severe constitutional and electoral crisis. The presidential vote was postponed, tensions escalated, and fears of democratic breakdown intensified. Yet dem…
