New Books in African Studies
Episodes
Susan Thomson, "Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace" (Yale UP, 2018)
25 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How do you put Humpty-Dumpty back together again? Susan Thomson's new book Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace (Yale University Press, 2018) exa...
Brannon D. Ingram, "Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam" (U California Press, 2018)
30 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam (University of California Press, 2018) by Brannon D. Ingram is a timely study of the Deoband...
Rosalind Fredericks, "Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018)
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The production and removal of garbage, as a key element of the daily infrastructure of urban life, is deeply embedded in social, moral, and political ...
Calvin Schermerhorn, "Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At this point, it is hard to fathom the shear volume of studies of American slavery that scholars have produced. And new works on American slavery are...
Jesse A. Zink, "Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan: Civil War, Migration, and the Rise of Dinka Anglicanism" (Baylor UP, 2018)
07 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The most recent addition to Baylor University Press’s Studies in World Christianity is Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan: Civil War, Migra...
Patrick Eisenlohr, "Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World" (U California Press, 2018)
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World(University of California Press, 2018) by Patrick Eisenlohr is an exciting...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Ruma Chopra, “Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone” (Yale UP, 2018)
21 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After being exiled from their native Jamaica in 1795, the Trelawney Town Maroons endured in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone. In Almost Home: Maro...
Jonathon Earle, “Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his book Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Dr. J...
Joanna Davidson, “Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa” (Oxford UP, 2015)
08 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a book about change. The...
Edward J. Watts, “Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny” (Basic Books, 2018)
05 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite enduring for nearly five centuries, the Roman Republic ended in a series of crises and wars that discredited the idea of republics in the West...
Miranda Kaufmann, “Black Tudors: The Untold Story” (Oneworld, 2017)
02 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptized in a London church. Henry ...
Ching Kwan Lee, “The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Ching Kwan Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has just published The Specter of Glob...
Jill Kelly, “To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996” (Michigan State UP, 2018)
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Jill Kelly about her new book To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996 published by Mi...
Jennifer Yusin, “The Future Life of Trauma: Partitions, Borders, Repetition” (Fordham UP, 2017)
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How does postcolonial theory and the work of Freud help us understand trauma? In The Future Life of Trauma: Partitions, Borders, Repetition (Fordham...
Paul Bjerk, “Julius Nyerere” (Ohio University Press, 2017)
05 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Bjerk’s compact biography Julius Nyerere, published as part of the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series follows closely on the heels of his m...
Laila Amine, “Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light” (U Wisconsin Press, 2018)
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the heart of Laila Amine’s book is a crucial question: where is Paris? This question may be surprising for anyone who can readily point to the Fr...
Nicholas Grant, “Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960” (UNC Press, 2017)
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The links between African Americans and the global struggle for decolonization, particularly in Africa are well-documented. Facing similar kinds of re...
Jeremy Martens, “Empire and Asian Migration: Sovereignty, Immigration Restriction and Protest in the British Settler Colonies, 1888–1907” (UWA Publishing, 2018)
14 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Empire and Asian Migration: Sovereignty, Immigration Restriction and Protest in the British Settler Colonies, 1888–1907 (UWA Publ...
Duane W. Roller, “Cleopatra’s Daughter: And Other Royal Women of the Augustan Era” (Oxford UP, 2018)
10 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For the most part women in the classical world have suffered from what Duane W. Roller terms “near-invisibility,” obscuring the consequential role...
Naomi André, “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Naomi André’s innovative new book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is an example of a concept she cal...
Pablo Gomez, “The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic” (UNC Press, 2017).
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Pablo Gomez‘s The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) exa...
Gordon Mathews, “The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
03 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of globalization and global cities, we might be inclined to think of New York or London. Yet in recent years, Guangzhou, the central man...
Jeff Koelher, “Where the Wild Coffee Grows: The Untold Story of Coffee from the Cloud Forests of Ethiopia to Your Cup” (Bloomsbury, 2017)
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is life without coffee possible? Before you answer, first admit that you know almost nothing about the plant that you depend on to deliver you conscio...
Darcie Fontaine, “Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Empire in France and Algeria” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
26 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What role did Christianity play in Algeria before, during, and after the war of independence? In Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Em...
Alden Young, “Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
29 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Telling the story of a former colony post-independence is tricky, no matter if it’s a colony in Latin America, the Middle East or East Asia. Where d...
Jeffrey Ahlman, “Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana” (Ohio University Press, 2017).
23 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1957 Ghana achieved its independence from Great Britain under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. In Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Af...
Kate Skinner, “The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914-2014” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her book, The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914-2014 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Kate Skinner...
Nancy Mitchell, “Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War” (Stanford UP, 2016)
09 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Nancy Mitchell about her book Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as pa...
John Nathaniel Clarke, “British Media and the Rwandan Genocide” (Routledge Press, 2018)
04 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It seems safe to assume that media coverage changes the behavior of politicians and voters. And it seems safe to assume this happens in cases of hum...
Omina El Shakry, “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt” (Princeton UP, 2017)
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Often, when writing the intellectual history of the Middle East, we make assumptions about the influence of ideas from other places on the Middle East...
Marie E. Berry, “War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and Bosnia Herzegovina” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
30 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How can war change women’s political mobilization? Using Rwanda and Bosnia as case studies Marie E. Berry answers these questions and more in her po...
Lisa A. Lindsay, “Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey” (UNC Press, 2017)
27 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The title of Lisa A. Lindsay’s book Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey from America to Africa (University of North Carolina Press, 2017),...
Aidan Forth, “Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876-1903” (U California Press, 2017)
24 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876-1903 (University of California Press, 2017), Aidan Forth employs a compar...
Katelyn Knox, “Race on Display in Twentieth- and Twenty First-Century France” (Liverpool UP, 2016)
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Katelyn Knox’s book, Race on Display in Twentieth- and Twenty First–Century France (Liverpool University Press, 2016) examines francophone litera...
Sharla Fett, “Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade” (UNC Press, 2017)
12 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Amistad Rebellion is usually remembered as the only instance in which a US court sent re-captured slaves back to Africa. Yet as Sharla Fett shows ...
Amy Bass, “One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together” (Hachette Books, 2018)
04 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Amy Bass, author of the book One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together (Hachette Books, 2018...
Fahad Bishara, “A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Fahad Bishara about his book A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (Cambridge University Press...
George Paul Meiu, “Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money and Belonging in Kenya” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
26 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor George Paul Meiu‘s debut anthropological book, Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya (University of Chicago Pre...
Sandra E. Greene, “Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition” (Indiana UP, 2017)
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
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 2...
Nic Cheeseman, “Institutions and Democracy in Africa” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Institutions and Democracy in Africa: How the Rules of the Game Shape Political Developments (Cambridge University Press, 2018), the contributors c...
Bonny Ibhawoh, “Human Rights in Africa” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
02 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Bonny Ibhawoh examines the discourse of human rights in Africa. He challen...
John Broich, “Squadron: Ending the African Slave Trade” (Overlook Duckworth Press, 2017)
01 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Despite the British being early abolitionists, a significant slave trade remained in the western Indian Ocean through the mid-1800s, even after the ce...
Jennifer Hart, “Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation” (Indiana UP, 2016)
23 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest today was Dr. Jennifer Hart who talked to us about her recently published book Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transpo...
Christopher J. Lee, “Soviet Journey: A Critical Annotated Edition” (Lexington Books, 2017)
22 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Kimberly speaks with Dr. Christopher J. Lee about his newest book A Soviet Journey: A Critical Annotated Edition (Lexington Books, 2017). A Soviet Jou...
Seth Markle, “A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974” (Michigan State UP, 2017).
16 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked to Seth Markle about his book, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974, ...
Kim Yi Dionne, “Doomed Interventions: The Failure of Global Responses to AIDS in Africa” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
AIDS is one of the primary causes of death in Africa. Of the more than 24 million Africans infected with HIV, only about 54% have access to the treatm...
Alexander Thurston, “Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement” (Princeton UP, 2017)
05 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Boko Haram is one of the most well known global terrorist organizations. They have killed thousands of people and displaced millions of West Africans....
Claire Eldridge, “From Empire to Exile” (Manchester UP, 2016)
26 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The French-Algerian War that erupted in 1954 ended with the emergence of an independent Algeria in 1962, but it was not until decades later that a bro...
Samuel Totten, “Sudan’s Nuba Mountains People Under Siege” (McFarland, 2017)
24 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast is usually devoted to book written about the past. The authors may be historians, or political scientists, or anthropologists, or even a ...
Herman Salton, “Dangerous Diplomacy: Bureaucracy, Power Politics and the Role of the UN Secretariat in Rwanda” (Oxford UP, 2017)
08 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
I was in graduate school during Bosnia and Rwanda. Like everyone else, I watched the video footage and journalistic accounts that came from these two ...
Randy M. Browne, “Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean” (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2017)
08 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Randy M. Browne in Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) uses the overlooked archives of the fiscal, a l...
Jessica Marglin, “Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco” (Yale UP, 2016)
24 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016), Jessica Marglin skillfully narrates how Jews and Muslims navi...
Michel Leiris, “Phantom Africa” (Seagull Books, 2017)
20 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1931 and 1933, French writer Michel Leiris participated in a state-sponsored expedition to document the cultural practices of people in west a...
Hilary Matfess, “Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses” (Zed Books, 2017)
18 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Hilary Matfess about her new book Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses, just recently published by Zed Book...
Sowande Mustakeem, “Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage” (U. Illinois Press, 2016)
14 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most scholars and members of the public believe the process of enslavement was confined to the Western Hemispheric plantation or other locations of en...
Marie Grace Brown, “Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan” (Stanford UP, 2017)
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Marie Grace Brown’s Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan (Stanford University Press, 2017) is in many ways a history of fa...
Padraic Scanlan, “Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolutions” (Yale UP, 2017)
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What was the British abolition of the slave trade like in practice? Padraic Scanlan, in his beautifully-written first book, Freedom’s Debtors: Briti...
Stephane Robolin, “Grounds of Engagement: Apartheid-Era African American and South African Writing” (U. Illinois Press, 2015)
30 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Writers have long created networks and connections by exchanging letters or writing back to one another in their poetry and fiction. Letters between E...
Sara E. Brown, “Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Rescuers and Perpetrators” (Routledge, 2017)
28 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to Scott Straus, Leanne Fujii and others, we know quite a bit about how men behaved during the genocide in Rwanda. But we know surprisingly lit...
Gregory Mann, “From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Non-Governmentality” (Cambridge UP, 2014).
17 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today we spoke to Gregory Mann about his book From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Non-Governmentality (Cambridge University Pr...
Keren Weitzberg, “We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya” (Ohio UP, 2017)
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Somalis have lived in Kenya for generations, in many cases since long before the founding of the country. Yet, Kenyan officials and citizens often per...
Regine Jean-Charles, “Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary” (OSU Press, 2014)
26 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Regine Jean-Charles’ Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014) foregroun...
Anne C. Bailey, “The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
20 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary conversations and debates over Confederate monuments underline how memory-making and the legacies of U.S. slavery and the Civil War remai...
Joanna Dee Das, “Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora” (Oxford UP, 2017)
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine D...
Michael Allan, “In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt” (Princeton UP, 2016)
14 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Allan‘s In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) challenges traditional perc...
Michael Barnett, “Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda” (Cornell UP, 2016)
06 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast marks the beginning of a new occasional series of podcasts about the genocide in Rwanda. In the next few months we’ll hear from Timothy...
Adriana Helbig, “Hip Hop Ukraine: Music, Race, and African Migration” (Indiana UP, 2014)
25 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 2004, during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Adriana Helbig saw African musicians rapping in Ukrainian and wearing embroidered Ukrainian ethnic c...
Ira Dworkin, “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State” (UNC Press, 2017)
20 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his 1903 hit “Congo Love Song,” James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song’...
Patrick N. Hunt, “Hannibal” (Simon and Schuster, 2017)
13 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 218 BCE, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca launched an invasion of Italy designed to bring the Roman Republic to its knees. Yet for all of hi...
Sarah Ladipo Manyika, “Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun” (Cassava Republic Press, 2016)
13 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s second novel, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun (Cassava Republic Press, 2016), is an excellent addition to the large...
Sarah Eltantawi, “Shari’ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution” (U. California Press, 2017)
12 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Few images attached to Islam and to the Islamic legal tradition (the Sharia) in particular are more often and more disturbingly sensationalized than t...
Anita Hannig, “Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital (U. Chicago Press, 2017)
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Anita Hannig‘s first book, Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital (University of Chicago Press, 2017) is an in-depth...
Linda Heywood, “Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen” (Harvard University Press, 2017)
19 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the capital of the African nation of Angola today stands a statue to Njinga, the 17th century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms. Its presenc...
Grace Davie, “Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
19 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Apartheid in South Africa formally ended in 1994, but the issue of poverty and what to do about it remained as contentious as it had been a century ea...
Bert Ingelaere, “Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice After Genocide” (U. Wisconsin Press, 2016)
13 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Rwanda’s homegrown gacaca law has been widely hailed as a successful indigenous solution to the unprecedented problem of the country’s 1994 genoci...
Brandon Kendhammer, “Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy and Law in Northern Nigeria” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
04 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Brandon Kendhammer takes a fresh approach to the juxtaposition of Islam and democracy in his latest book, Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Dem...
Anuradha Chakravarty, “Investing in Authoritarian Rule: Punishment and Patronage in Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts for Genocide Crimes,” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In my time doing this podcast, I’ve covered a number of books about transitional justice. All have been insightful and interesting. But few of them ...
Daniel Magaziner, “The Art of Life in South Africa” (Ohio University Press, 2016)
17 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Magaziner’s latest book, The Art of Life in South Africa (Ohio University Press, 2016, and UKZN Press, 2017), is a welcome addition to the in...
Telesphore Ngarambe, “Practical Challenges in Customary Law Translation: The Case of Rwanda’s Gacaca Law” (OSSREA, 2015)
06 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The unprecedented crime of the 1994 Rwandan genocide demanded an unconventional legal response. After failed attempts by the international legal syste...
Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken, “Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884-1960” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
04 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
“There were black Germans?” My students are always surprised to learn that there were and are a community of African immigrants and Afro-Germans ...
Nathan Hofer, “The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325” (Edinburgh UP, 2015)
27 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Medieval Egypt had a rapid influx of Sufis, which has previously been explained through reactionary models of analysis. It was argued that the widespr...
Toni Pressley-Sanon, “Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen” (McFarland, 2016)
18 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen (McFarland, 2016) dwells on the intersections of memory, history, and cultural produc...
Sylvester Johnson, “African American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
29 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When and where do African American religions begin? Sylvester Johnson, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Northw...
Noah Salomon, “For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State (Princeton UP, 2016)
17 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In popular discourse today, few concepts are more sensationalized and maliciously caricatured than that of the Islamic State. In his fascinating new b...
Jean-Germain Gros, “Healthcare Policy in Africa” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
02 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Healthcare Policy In Africa: Institutions and Politics from Colonialism to the Present (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Jean-Germain Gros argues tha...
Susan Verde, “The Water Princess” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2016)
29 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Supermodel Georgie Badiel grew up in a small village in Burkina Faso where the closest source of water was many miles from home. After launching her s...
Carina E. Ray, “Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana” (Ohio UP, 2015)
07 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2015), Carina E. Ray interrogates th...
Ethan Katz, “The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France” (Harvard UP, 2015)
28 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Harvard University Press, 2015), Ethan Katz examines and interrogates Jew...
Steve Kemper, “A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham” (W. W. Norton, 2016)
13 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham (W. W. Norton, 2016), freelance journalist Steve Kemper details the adventurous, ...
Michael F. Robinson, “The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent” (Oxford UP, 2016)
03 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Michael F. Robinson‘s new book is such a pleasure to read, I cant even. It’s not just because you get to say Gambaragara over and over again if yo...
Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016)
02 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and e...
Birgit Meyer, “Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana” (U of California Press, 2015)
30 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Anthropologist Birgit Meyer‘s most recent book, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana (University of California Press, 2015),...
Allison Drew, “We Are No Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria” (Manchester UP, 2014)
31 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Allison Drew‘s We Are No Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria (Manchester University Press, 2014) traces the long, complex history of co...
Krista A. Thompson, “Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice” (Duke UP, 2015)
04 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice (Duke University Press, 2015) is a gorgeous book. It’s about light and th...
Elizabeth M. Williams, “The Politics of Race in Britain and South Africa” (I. B. Tauris, 2015)
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 1951 a West-Indian seaman was killed in Cape Town by two white policemen. His murder had initiated protests and demonstrations in the Caribbean and...
Paul Bjerk, “Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Sovereignty in Tanzania, 1960-1964”
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Let’s begin with what Paul Bjerk’s new book isn’t: “a biography or evaluation of Julius Nyerere.” Instead, according to a letter that Bjerk ...
Alice J. Kang, “Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy” (U of Minnesota Press, 2015)
16 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Alice J. Kang has written Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Kang is ass...
Sarah Abrevaya Stein, “Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria” (U of Chicago, 2014)
07 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (University of Chicago, 2014), Sarah Abrevaya Stein, professor of history and the Maurice Amado Chair i...
Marjorie Feld, “Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle over Apartheid” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
23 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle over Apartheid (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Marjorie Feld, associate professor of history at Babson ...