Podcasts · Society & Culture

New Books in African Studies

Marshall Poe

300 episodes

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.

More about the show

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Episodes page 3 of 6

  1. Eric H. Cline, "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed" (Princeton UP, 2025)

    · 1 h 07 min · Episode 815

    From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of the ancient Near East In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing…

  2. Two Decades On: The African Union, Power, and Africa’s Democratic Future

    · 37 min · Episode 41

    When the African Union was founded in 2002, it promised to deliver a more united, prosperous, and people-centred continent. Two decades later, Africa’s political landscape tells a more complex story: one of ambition…

  3. Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)

    · 44 min · Episode 813

    Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, the Vietnam War brought the dangers of US imperialism and the global…

  4. Loic De Canniere, "The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labour Markets and Welfare" (Anthem, 2025)

    · 1 h 05 min · Episode 812

    The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labor Markets and Welfare explores the major trends that will define the face of the sub-Saharan continent in the next three decades. The near doubling of Africa’s…

  5. Loic De Canniere, "The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labour Markets and Welfare" (Anthem, 2025)

    · 1 h 05 min · Episode 811

    The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labor Markets and Welfare explores the major trends that will define the face of the sub-Saharan continent in the next three decades. The near doubling of Africa’s…

  6. Aria Fani, "Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism" (U Texas Press, 2024)

    · 50 min · Episode 810

    The dynamic and interconnected ways Afghans and Iranians invented their modern selves through literature. Contrary to the presumption that literary nationalism in the Global South emerged through contact with Europe…

  7. Claudia Gastrow, "The Aesthetics of Belonging: Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda" (UNC Press Books, 2024)

    · 57 min · Episode 229

    After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola’s three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reimagine the Luanda cityscape. Awash with petrodollars cultivated through…

  8. Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

    · 1 h 08 min · Episode 105

    In Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa (Cambridge UP, 2021), Kalle Kananoja tells the story of how pre-colonial communities throughout the west coast of Africa employed a wide range of medical and spiritual strategies…

  9. Julia Ross Cummiskey, "Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global" (Ohio UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 35 min · Episode 807

    Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global (Ohio UP, 2024) presents the stories of scientists at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), a biomedical center founded in 1936. The book…

  10. Mahboob Qirvanian and Behnaz Mirzai, "Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 806

    Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that chronicles the life of Mahboob Qirvanian, from childhood and…

  11. Joshua Eisenman and David H. Shinn, "China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement" (Columbia UP, 2023)

    · 1 h 44 min · Episode 805

    Since Xi Jinping’s accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China’s relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding…

  12. Alex Egodotaye Asakitikpi and Aretha Oluwakemi Asakitikpi, "Modern Nigeria" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

    · 53 min · Episode 804

    Modern Nigeria: Understanding Modern Nations (Bloomsbury, 2024) is a collaborative effort that explores Nigeria's historical context and emphasises the importance of Nigeria's diverse historical roots to understanding…

  13. Marcia C. Schenck, "Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

    · 43 min · Episode 226

    This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. They went to work and to be trained as a vanguard labor force…

  14. Erin M.B. O'Halloran, "East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World Between the Wars" (Stanford UP, 2025)

    · 54 min · Episode 802

    Between the First and Second World Wars, activists across the British Empire began to think about what their homes might look like as independent nations, rather than colonies subject to the control of London.…

  15. Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean" (Yale UP, 2025)

    · 53 min · Episode 801

    Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywhere. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crème brûlée to…

  16. Rosemary Admiral, "Living Law: Women and Legality in Marinid Morocco" (Syracuse UP, 2025)

    · 46 min · Episode 100

    Dr. Rosemary Admiral provides a groundbreaking history of women’s legal engagement in Marinid Morocco between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries that fundamentally challenges contemporary assumptions about women’s…

  17. Timothy Williams, "Memory Politics After Mass Violence: Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape" (Bristol UP, 2025)

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 799

    Memory Politics After Mass Violence: Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape (Bristol UP, 2025) explores how political actors draw on memories of violent pasts to generate political power and legitimacy in the present.…

  18. Julia Rensing, "Troubling Archives: History and Memory in Namibian Literature and Art" (Transcript Publishing, 2025)

    · 47 min · Episode 798

    Namibia’s colonial history casts a long shadow over the country’s present. Contemporary authors and artists confront the legacies of German and South African colonial rule and engage creatively with the persistent…

  19. Laurian R. Bowles, "Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

    · 1 h 06 min · Episode 797

    Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) explores the experiences of women porters, called kayayei, in Accra, Ghana. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork, anthropologist…

  20. Wendell Marsh, "Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities" (Columbia UP, 2025)

    · 56 min · Episode 796

    Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a…

  21. Devin Smart, "Preparing the Modern Meal: Urban Capitalism and Working-Class Food in Kenya's Port City" (Ohio UP, 2025)

    · 1 h 25 min · Episode 795

    Preparing the Modern Meal: Urban Capitalism and Working-Class Food in Kenya's Port City (Ohio UP, 2025) is an urban history that connects town and country. Devin Smart examines how labor migrants who left subsistence…

  22. Shakirah E. Hudani, "Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    · 40 min · Episode 794

    Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda (U of Chicago Press, 2024) by Dr. Shakirah Hudani examines a “material politics of repair” in post-genocide Rwanda, where in a country saturated…

  23. Rose Casey, "Aesthetic Impropriety: Property Law and Postcolonial Style" (Fordham UP, 2025)

    · 53 min · Episode 793

    Aesthetic Impropriety: Property Law and Postcolonial Style (Fordham UP, 2025) analyzes vanguard legal actions and literary innovations to reveal contemporary reforms to property law that are undoing law’s colonial…

  24. j. Siguru Wahutu, "In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    · 1 h 12 min · Episode 792

    In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa (Cambridge UP, 2025) unpacks the historical, cultural, and institutional forces that organize and circulate journalistic narratives in Africa to show…

  25. William Kelleher Storey, "The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes" (Oxford UP, 2025)

    · 1 h 03 min · Episode 791

    Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the world's most important diamond mining company, De Beers, as well as a…

  26. Daisy Livingston, "Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

    · 59 min · Episode 790

    Archives are not only sources for history but have their own histories too, which shape how historians can tell stories of the past. In Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society (Edinburgh UP,…

  27. Gregg Mitman, "Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia" (New Press, 2021)

    · 43 min · Episode 81

    In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of the world’s rubber grew under the U.S. flag, creating a bottleneck that…

  28. Lucia Sorbera, "Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt" (U of California Press, 2025)

    · 41 min · Episode 788

    It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt (U of California Press, 2025) shows—the long…

  29. Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025)

    · 56 min · Episode 787

    Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis Nairobi, known as the Green City in the Sun, has taken shape through anti-urban ideologies that insist that…

  30. Mariam F. Ayad ed., "Coptic Culture and Community: Daily Lives, Changing Times" (American University in Cairo Press, 2024)

    · 1 h 21 min · Episode 786

    Coptic Culture and Community: Daily Lives, Changing Times (American University in Cairo Press 2024) brings together fourteen contributions from global scholars all considering the theme of daily life and the Egyptian…

  31. Adam A. Blackler, "An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

    · 58 min · Episode 137

    At the turn of the twentieth century, depictions of the colonized world were prevalent throughout the German metropole. Tobacco advertisements catered to the erotic gaze of imperial enthusiasts with images of Ovaherero…

  32. Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)

    · 49 min · Episode 784

    A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position in the Indian Ocean. Here the reign of Oman’s longest-serving ruler,…

  33. Kevin P. Donovan, "Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 219

    In his book, Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Kevin Donovan argues that East African decolonization was not coterminous with political…

  34. Domale Dube, "Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice" (University of Illinois Press, 2025)

    · 36 min · Episode 782

    ­A Glimpse of Ogoni Women’s Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbodi “Ogoni Women’s Activism” is a democratic feminist movement, and a nonviolent…

  35. Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

    · 51 min · Episode 1176

    In African Peacekeeping (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Dr. Jonathan Fisher and Dr. Nina Wilén explore the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping. This concise and…

  36. Rita Kiki Edozie and Moses Khisa, "Africa's New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations" (Lynne Rienner, 2022)

    · 1 h 55 min · Episode 218

    The African Union's threat to lead African states' mass withdrawal from the International Criminal Court in 2008 marked just one of many encounters that demonstrate African leaders' growing confidence and activism in…

  37. Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 1196

    In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising story of how Algeria joined and then left the postwar European Economic…

  38. Klaus Bachmann, "The Genocide in Rwanda in Comparative Perspective: Death and Survival on the Lake Kivu Shore" (Routledge, 2025)

    · 1 h 18 min · Episode 225

    The Genocide in Rwanda in Comparative Perspective: Death and Survival on the Lake Kivu Shore (Routledge, 2025) combines social science concepts, history and transitional justice studies to examine the social dynamics,…

  39. Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)

    · 57 min · Episode 537

    In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the Strait of Gibraltar as an untamed in-between space—from “shatter…

  40. M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020)

    · 39 min · Episode 105

    In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrated their studies of North Africa on colonial violence, domination,…

  41. Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain" (Profile Books, 2025)

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 177

    Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover that gym treadmills were pioneered on plantations or that denim…

  42. John Nott, "Between Feast Famine: Food, Health, and the History of Ghana's Long Twentieth Century" (UCL Press, 2025)

    · 1 h 40 min · Episode 215

    Ghana’s twentieth century was one of dramatic political, economic, and environmental change. Sparked initially by the impositions of colonial rule, these transformations had significant, if rarely uniform,…

  43. Alpha Nkuranga, "Born to Walk: My Journey of Trials and Resilience" (Goose Lane, 2024)

    · 39 min · Episode 773

    In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Alpha Nkuranga about her deeply powerful and unforgettable memoir, Born to Walk: My Journey of Trials and Resilience (Goose Lane Editions, 2024). “My grandparents…

  44. Judith Scheele, "Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara" (Basic Books, 2025)

    · 1 h 03 min · Episode 216

    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, desperate migrants stuck in a hostile…

  45. Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)

    · 48 min · Episode 771

    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 rising power and profits of Wall…

  46. Tochi Onyebuchi, "Harmattan Season: A Novel" (Tor Books, 2025)

    · 28 min · Episode 770

    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 journey to discover what happened to the…

  47. Ioana Emy Matesan, "The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia" (Oxford UP, 2020)

    · 38 min · Episode 769

    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 disengagement from violence? To answer these…

  48. Emmanuel Akyeampong, "Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders" (Indiana UP, 2023)

    · 1 h 24 min · Episode 768

    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 projects of nation-building, economic…

  49. Candace Lukasik, "Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2025)

    · 51 min · Episode 767

    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 American missionary efforts, in recent years…

  50. Ulf Laessing, "Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi" (Hurst, 2020)

    · 1 h 04 min · Episode 766

    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 major security headache for Europe.…

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