Podcast
New Books in African Studies
Episodes — page 8
- Judith Scheele, "Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara" (Basic Books, 2025)
What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate change, civil war, desper…
- Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)
The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austin is an exploration of how the…
- Tochi Onyebuchi, "Harmattan Season: A Novel" (Tor Books, 2025)
Tochi Onyebuchi’s novel Harmattan Season : A Novel (Tor Books, 2025) follows Boubacar, a veteran and private eye living in French occupied West Africa, as he begins a reluctant jou…
- Ioana Emy Matesan, "The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Research shows that repression can lead to both radicalization and deradicalization. When does it drive groups to pick up arms, and under what conditions does it foster disengageme…
- Emmanuel Akyeampong, "Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders" (Indiana UP, 2023)
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of independence through the joint pr…
- Candace Lukasik, "Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2025)
Coptic Orthodox Christians comprise the largest Christian community in the Middle East and are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. While once the objects of Americ…
- Ulf Laessing, "Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi" (Hurst, 2020)
Why has Libya fallen apart since 2011? The world has largely given up trying to understand how the revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi has left the country a failed state and a…
- Jenn Hobbs, "Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security" (Bristol University Press, 2024)
In recent years, security actors have become increasingly concerned with health issues. Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics…
- Sarah Nagaty, "The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) links two seminal moments in Egypt’s history – the Revolution of 25th January 2011 and the pres…
- Andrew Smith, "First People: The Lost History of the Khoisan" (Jonathan Ball, 2022)
First people communities are the early groups of hunter gatherers, herders, and the oldest human lineages of Africa, some migrating from as far as East Africa to settle across sout…
- Jonas Elbousty and Roger Allen, "Reading Mohamed Choukri's Narratives: Hunger in Eden" (Routledge, 2024)
Reading Mohamed Choukri’s Narratives: Hunger in Eden (Routledge, 2024) presents an intricate exploration into the life and literary universe of Mohamed Choukri, a towering figure i…
- Jody Benjamin, "The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700-1850" (Ohio UP, 2024)
The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700 – 1850 (Ohio UP, 2024) examines historical change across a broad region of western Africa—from Sa…
- Yolanda Aixelà-Cabré, "Spain’s African Colonial Legacies: Morocco and Equatorial Guinea Compared" (Brill, 2022)
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…
- Aaron Robertson, "The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America" (FSG, 2024)
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…
- Lorna Gibb, "Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages" (Princeton UP, 2025)
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 ta…
- Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024)
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 migra…
- Las G. Newman, "To Die in Africa’s Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century" (Langham, 2024)
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 ch…
- Bianca Murillo, "Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2017)
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 i…
- Chitra Nagarajan, "The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict" (Cassava Republic, 2025)
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 account…
- Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century" (Duke UP, 2024)
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…
