New Books in African Studies
680 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 days ago - ★★★★ - 39 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Africa about their New Books
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Episodes
Amadou Hampâté Bâ, "Amkoullel: The Fula Boy" (Duke UP, 2021)
April 26, 2022 08:00 - 47 minutes“In Africa, when an elder dies, a library burns.” We’ve all heard this phrase, or some version of it, but not all of us know who uttered it. It was the singular Amadou Hampâté Bâ. By the end of his long life, Bâ, the ethnographer, author, interpreter, religious teacher, poet, philosopher and ambassador had himself become one of Africa’s most famous “elders”, and, to borrow his phrase, one of the continent’s most expansive “libraries”. Amkoullel, the Fula Boy (Duke University Press, 2021) is t...
Harry Verhoeven and Anatol Lieven, "Beyond Liberal Order: States, Societies and Markets in the Global Indian Ocean" (Oxford UP, 2022)
April 21, 2022 08:00 - 54 minutesWe often neglect the Indian Ocean when we talk about our macro-level models of geopolitics, global economics or grand strategy—often in favor of the Atlantic or the Pacific. Yet the Indian Ocean—along whose coasts live a third of humanity—may be a better vehicle to understand how our world is changing. Globalization first began in the Indian Ocean with traders sailing between the Gulf, South Asia and Southeast Asia, spreading goods, cultures and ideas. And now, with no hegemon and an array of...
Delinda Collier, "Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa" (Duke UP, 2020)
April 20, 2022 08:00 - 57 minutesIn Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa (Duke University Press, 2020) Delinda Collier provides a sweeping new understanding of technological media in African art, rethinking the assumptions that have conceptualized African art as unmediated, primary, and natural. Collier responds to these preoccupations by exploring African artworks that challenge these narratives. From one of the first works of electronic music, Halim El-Dabh’s Ta’abir Al-Zaar (1944), and Souleymane Cissé's 1987 fi...
Hilton Judin, "Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital" (Routledge, 2021)
April 19, 2022 08:00 - 27 minutesHilton Judin's book Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital (Routledge, 2021) is the first comprehensive investigation of the architecture of the apartheid state in the period of rapid economic growth and political repression from 1957 to 1966 when buildings took on an ideological role that was never remote from the increasingly dominant administrative, legislative and policing mechanisms of the regime. It considers how this process reflected the usurpa...
Simon Peter Newman, "Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London" (U London Press, 2022)
April 19, 2022 08:00 - 41 minutesFreedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London (University of London Press, 2022) by Professor Simon P. Newman reveals the hidden stories of enslaved and bound people who attempted to escape from captivity in England’s capital. In 1655 White Londoners began advertising in the English-speaking world’s first newspapers for enslaved people who had escaped. Based on the advertisements placed in these newspapers by masters and enslavers offering rewards for so-called runaways, this b...
The Future of the Far Right in the U.S.: A Discussion with Timothy Snyder
April 19, 2022 08:00 - 43 minutesThe events of January 6th 2021 are contested in the US. For some supporters of Donald Trump it was, and remains, a case of a legitimate protest against a rigged election. For opponents of Mr. Trump, it was an attempt to bully Congress through physical intimidation into refusing to validate the correct election result. That so many Americans believe the election was rigged raises questions about the nature of right wing politics in the US. This podcast covers these issues with Professor Timoth...
Jason K. Stearns, "The War That Doesn't Say Its Name: The Unending Conflict in the Congo" (Princeton UP, 2022)
April 08, 2022 08:00 - 2 hoursWell into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a "forever war"--a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds over power and identity. Millions have died in one of the worst humanitarian calamities of our time. The War That Doesn't Say Its Name: The Unending Conflict in the Congo (Princeton UP, 2022) investigates the most recent phase of this conflict, asking why the peace deal of 2003--accompanied by the largest United Nati...
Jared Staller, "Converging on Cannibals: Terrors of Slaving in Atlantic Africa, 1509-1670" (Ohio UP, 2019)
April 07, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn Converging on Cannibals: Terrors of Slaving in Atlantic Africa, 1509-1670 (Ohio UP, 2019), Jared Staller tells the history of how the myth of cannibalism in West Central Africa developed between 1509 and 1670 in the context of mis-understandings between European and Africans. Many of these misunderstandings were in fact intentional, given that the myth of cannibalism proved very useful to Portuguese slavers seeking to bypass the restrictions imposed by the Papacy as to who could be justifi...
Jochen Lingelbach, "On the Edges of Whiteness: Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
April 06, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourAs the horrors of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine unfold before our eyes, we have witnessed a massive wave of refugees absorbed by a range of Eastern European countries – with the most refugees so far remaining in Poland. This is a remarkably apt moment to talk about the lessons of an important new study by historian Jochen Lingelbach. In On the Edges of Whiteness: Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War (Berghahn, 2020), Lingelbach tells the story o...
Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, "African Peacekeeping" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
April 04, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutesIn 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 accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeeping by Africans. The book argues that “African peacekeeping should be understood not as simply an adjunct, technical activity but as a complex set of...
Marie Muschalek, "Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa" (Cornell UP, 2019)
March 31, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourSlaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were a quotidian part of life in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing this culture of normalized violence in a settler colony, Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa (Cornell UP, 2019) uncovers the workings of a powerful state that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives. Marie A. Muschalek's fascinating p...
Elisabeth King and Cyrus Samii, "Diversity, Violence, and Recognition: How Recognizing Ethnic Identity Promotes Peace" (Oxford UP, 2020)
March 29, 2022 08:00 - 42 minutesIn Diversity, Violence, and Recognition: How Recognizing Ethnic Identity Promotes Peace (Oxford UP, 2020), Elisabeth King and Cyrus Samii examine the reasons that governments choose to recognize ethnic identities and the consequences of such choices for peace. The authors introduce a theory on the merits and risks of recognizing ethnic groups in state institutions, pointing to the crucial role of ethnic demographics. Through a global quantitative analysis and in-depth case studies of Burundi,...
Serena Owusua Dankwa, "Knowing Women: Same-sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
March 24, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourKnowing Women: Same-sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a study of same-sex desire in West Africa, which explores the lives and friendships of working-class women in southern Ghana who are intimately involved with each other. Based on in-depth research of the life histories of women in the region, Serena O. Dankwa highlights the vibrancy of everyday same-sex intimacies that have not been captured in a globally pervasive language of sexual identity....
Jeremy Friedman, "Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World" (Harvard UP, 2022)
March 24, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. In Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World (Harvard UP, 2022), Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran. These states sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc or the pro...
Pardis Sabeti and Lara Salahi, "Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic, With a New Preface and Epilogue" (Harvard UP, 2021)
March 18, 2022 08:00 - 29 minutesAs we saw with the Ebola outbreak--and the disastrous early handling of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic--a lack of preparedness, delays, and system-wide problems with the distribution of critical medical supplies can have deadly consequences. Yet after every outbreak, the systems put in place to coordinate emergency responses are generally dismantled. One of America's top biomedical researchers, Dr. Pardis Sabeti, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning collaborator, Lara Salahi, argue that these pr...
Brian J. Peterson, "Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa" (Indiana UP, 2021)
March 17, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourThomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021) by Brian J. Peterson is a thoroughly researched biography of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso. Peterson sketches Sankara’s rise to power in the early 1980s and focuses specifically on how his military experiences, educational background, and community of mentors, family, and friends shaped his radicalism. Peterson frames Sankara within a second-generation of anti-colonial radicals who b...
The Future of Africa: A Discussion with James A. Robinson
March 15, 2022 08:00 - 52 minutesAfrica is often portrayed in terms of dictators, starvation, corruption, tribalism, war, disease, poverty and crime. In this podcast Professor James A. Robinson of the University of Chicago who is co-author (with Daron Acemoglu of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Currency, 2013) explains why those stereotypes are often wrong and why he believes Africa has a brighter future than many think. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC co...
Vicki L. Brennan, "Singing Yoruba Christianity: Music, Media, and Morality" (Indiana UP, 2018)
March 08, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourSinging the same song is a central part of the worship practice for members for the Cherubim and Seraphim Christian Church in Lagos, Nigeria. Vicki L. Brennan reveals that by singing together, church members create one spiritual mind and become unified around a shared set of values. She follows parishioners as they attend choir rehearsals, use musical media—hymn books and cassette tapes—and perform the music and rituals that connect them through religious experience. Brennan asserts that chur...
Carol Berger, "The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army: The Role of Social Process and Routinised Violence in South Sudan's Military" (Routledge, 2022)
March 04, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army: The Role of Social Process and Routinised Violence in South Sudan's Military (Routledge, 2022), Dr. Carol Berger examines the role of social process and routinised violence in the use of underaged soldiers in the country now known as South Sudan during the twenty-one-year civil war between Sudan’s northern and southern regions. Drawing on accounts of South Sudanese who as children and teenagers were part of the Red Army—the youth wing of the Sudan P...
Candace M. Keller, "Imaging Culture: Photography in Mali, West Africa" (Indiana UP, 2021)
February 28, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourImaging Culture: Photography in Mali, West Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021) is a sociohistorical study of the meaning, function, and aesthetic significance of photography in Mali, West Africa, from the 1930s to the present. Spanning the dynamic periods of colonialism, national independence, socialism, and democracy, its analysis focuses on the studio and documentary work of professional urban photographers, particularly in the capital city of Bamako and in smaller cities such as Mopti ...
Michelle Gordon, "Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’: Colonial Warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone and Sudan" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
February 25, 2022 09:00 - 59 minutesAnalysing three cases of British colonial violence that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, this book argues that all three share commonalities, including the role of racial prejudices in justifying the perpetration of extreme colonial violence. Exploring the connections and comparisons between the Perak War (1875–76), the 'Hut Tax' Revolt in Sierra Leone (1898–99) and the Anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan (1896–99), Gordon highlights the significance of decision-maki...
Eghosa Imasuen, "Fine Boys: A Novel" (Ohio UP, 2021)
February 22, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn Fine Boys: A Novel (Ohio University Press, 2021), Ewaen is a Nigerian teenager, bored at home in Warri and eager to flee from his parents’ unhappy marriage and incessant quarreling. When Ewaen is admitted to the University of Benin, he makes new friends who, like him, are excited about their newfound independence. They hang out in parking lots, trading gibes in pidgin and English and discovering the pleasures that freedom affords them. But when university strikes begin and ruthlessly viole...
Marissa Mika, "Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda" (Ohio UP, 2021)
February 18, 2022 09:00 - 55 minutesThousands of stories are given voice by Marissa Mika in Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda (Ohio UP, 2021), a fearless, warm, and humane history of the Uganda Cancer Institute’s first half century. Mika treads carefully but surely through the fields of colonial and post-colonial medical research and politics while never losing sight of the individuals who worked, planned, improvised, suffered, survived and died at the UCI. The book is a fascinating contrast to the...
3.2 Promises Unkept: Damon Galgut with Andrew van der Vlies
February 17, 2022 09:00 - 47 minutesGuest host Chris Holmes sits down with Booker Prize winning novelist Damon Galgut and Andrew van der Vlies, distinguished scholar of South African literature and global modernisms at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Andrew and Damon tunnel down into the structures of Damon’s newest novel, The Promise to locate the ways in which a generational family story reflects broadly on South Africa’s present moment. The two discuss how lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic invoke for some the lim...
Afe Adogame, "Indigeneity in African Religions: Oza Worldviews, Cosmologies and Religious Cultures" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
February 11, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourBased on religious ethnography, in-depth interviews and archival data, Afe Adogame, Indigeneity in African Religions: Oza Worldviews, Cosmologies and Religious Cultures (Bloomsbury, 2021) explores the historical origins, worldviews, cosmologies, ritual symbolism and praxis of the indigenous Oza people in South West Nigeria. The author's locationality and positionality plugs the book within decolonizing knowledges and indigeneity discourses, thus unpacking the complexity of “indigeneity” and c...
Phillip A. Cantrell, "Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda" (U Wisconsin Press, 2022)
February 10, 2022 09:00 - 53 minutesIn recent years, the media has depicted Rwanda as a model of unity, development, and recovery. Dr. Cantrell II argues that not all is as it seems in Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). The book argues that, from the start, the founders of the church accepted erroneous myths about Rwanda and its people and, as a result, were too closely aligned with whomever was in power. As such, the church endorsed the ruling autho...
James S. Williams, "Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
February 08, 2022 13:00 - 1 hourSince the beginnings of African cinema, the realm of beauty on screen has been treated with suspicion by directors and critics alike. In Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty (Bloomsbury, 2019), James S. Williams explores an exciting new generation of African directors, including Abderrahmane Sissako, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Fanta Régina Nacro, Alain Gomis, Newton I. Aduaka, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Mati Diop, who have begun to reassess and embrace the conce...
Marco Wyss, "Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa's Cold War" (Oxford UP, 2021)
February 07, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn light of the discrepancy between Britain’s and France’s postcolonial security roles in Africa, which seemed already determined half a decade after independence, this book studies the making of the postcolonial security relationship during the transfer of power and the early years of independence (1958-1966). It focuses on West Africa, and more specifically the newly independent states of Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, which rapidly evolved into key players in the postcolonial struggle for Afri...
Alexander Dukalskis, "Making the World Safe for Dictatorship" (Oxford UP, 2021)
February 02, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn Making the World Safe for Dictatorship (Oxford University Press, 2021) Dr. Alexander Dukalskis looks at the tactics that authoritarian states use for image management and the ways in which their strategies vary from one state to another, using both "promotional" tactics of persuasion and "obstructive" tactics of repression. Using a diverse array of data, including interviews, cross-national data on extraterritorial repression, examination of public relations filings with the United States ...
Erin Jessee et al., "Nyiragitwa: Daughter of Sacyega" (Mudacumura, 2021)
January 31, 2022 09:00 - 36 minutesErin Jessee, of the University of Glasgow, with her Rwandan co-author Jerome Irankunda, illustrator Christian Mafigiri, and translator Sylvere Mwizerwa, have published a graphic novel titled Nyiragitwa (Kigali: Mudacumura Publishing House, 2021). It tells the story of Nyiragitwa, a Rwandan woman who is thought to have lived in the 17th century. The first in a series of graphic novels about Rwandans living in the pre-colonial era, Nyiragitwa provides insight into how Rwandan women might have l...
Omar Ashour, "How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
January 31, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Omar Ashour has written a detailed and data-rich analysis of ISIS's way of war. He analyzes the tactical and operational levels of war to depict what makes ISIS successful and unique. He reveals that ISIS was tactically and organizationally innovative, redefining not just what a terrorist organization is, but what it does. Not only did SIS pioneer a number of highly innovative tactical and procedural te...
Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine, "The Persistence of Slavery: An Economic History of Child Trafficking in Nigeria" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
January 28, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourDespite efforts to abolish slavery throughout Africa in the nineteenth century, the coercive labor systems that constitute "modern slavery" have continued to the present day. To understand why, Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine explores child trafficking, pawning, and marriages in Nigeria's Bight of Biafra, and the ways in which British colonial authorities and Igbo, Ibibio, Efik, and Ijaw populations mobilized children's labor during the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wealth of primary sourc...
Courtney Hillebrecht, "Saving the International Justice Regime: Beyond Backlash against International Courts" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
January 25, 2022 09:00 - 47 minutesSaving the International Justice Regime: Beyond Backlash against International Courts (Cambridge University Press, 2021) is at the forefront of a new conceptualization of backlash politics. Dr. Courtney Hillebrecht brings together theories, concepts and methods from the fields of international law, international relations, human rights and political science and case studies from around the globe to pose - and answer - three questions related to backlash against international courts: What is b...
Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, "Quagmire in Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
January 19, 2022 09:00 - 46 minutesIn Quagmire in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Dr. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war, moving beyond the notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars. In a rigorous but accessible analysis, he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices. To support the argument, Dr. Schulhofer-Wohl draws upon field research on Lebanon's sixteen-year civil war, structured comparisons with...
Rebekah Lee, "Health, Healing and Illness in African History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
January 17, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourIn Health, Healing and Illness in African History (Bloomsbury, 2021), Rebekah Lee makes an overall assessment of the history and historiography and health, healing and illness in the African context. This unique text is divided in two parts. In the first half of the book, Lee presents a chronological survey and analysis of the ideas and literature that multiple disciplines have produced while studying the experience of health and illness, as well as medical and healing practices in Africa. Th...
Julie Kleinman, "Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris" (U California Press, 2019)
January 14, 2022 09:00 - 59 minutesEvery day, hundreds of thousands of people move through the Gare du Nord train station in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, the largest train station in Europe. Julie Kleinman's Adventure Capital: Migration and the Making of an African Hub in Paris (University of California Press, 2019) delves into the contemporary life of the station, and especially the lives and social world of the West African migrants who congregate there daily. The project makes connections between twentieth and twenty-f...
Charles Melson, "Fighting for Time: Rhodesia's Military and Zimbabwe’s Independence" (Casemate Academic, 2021)
January 06, 2022 09:00 - 46 minutesFrom the 1960s through 1970s there were a series of conflicts in Africa involving Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal in conflict with the so-called Frontline States. There was an international element with the Cold War and saw American interest at the diplomatic, economic, and social level. In the post-Vietnam period there was participation by individual American soldiers and politicians. Most of what has been published to date about this conflict has been fashionable journalism, narrow uni...
Aro Velmet, "Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World" (Oxford UP, 2020)
December 31, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourAro Velmet's Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Oxford UP, 2020) is a complex history of the Pasteur Institutes, a network of scientific laboratories established in France and throughout the French empire, beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The book examines the crucial roles Pastorians and Pasteurization played in the imperial project in and between different locations, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa. Participating in the "c...
Isaac A. Kamola, "Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary" (Duke UP, 2019)
December 29, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourFollowing World War II the American government and philanthropic foundations fundamentally remade American universities into sites for producing knowledge about the world as a collection of distinct nation-states. As neoliberal reforms took hold in the 1980s, visions of the world made popular within area studies and international studies found themselves challenged by ideas and educational policies that originated in business schools and international financial institutions. Academics within ...
Mesfin Tadesse and Ianet Bastyan, "Lucy's People: An Ethiopian Memoir" (Yerada Lij, 2021)
December 29, 2021 09:00 - 2 hoursLucy's People: An Ethiopian Memoir (Yerada Lij,2021) is the inspiring story of a country and a life. Young engineer Mesfin grows up under Emperor Haile Selassie I in Ethiopia. She is mother to all her people. Under her sun and moon, women walk tall. Many are warriors, including his mother and grandmother. The boy comprehends the burden placed upon ethical military such as his colonel father. He defends Ethiopian borders and the socially marginalised. Like him, Mesfin defies those who thrive o...
Nicole Fox, "After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda" (U Wisconsin Press, 2021)
December 28, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn the wake of unthinkable atrocities, it is reasonable to ask how any population can move on from the experience of genocide. Simply remembering the past can, in the shadow of mass death, be retraumatizing. So how can such momentous events be memorialized in a way that is productive and even healing for survivors? Genocide memorials tell a story about the past, preserve evidence of the violence that occurred, and provide emotional support to survivors. But the goal of amplifying survivors' v...
Lennart Bolliger, "Apartheid's Black Soldiers: Unnational Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa" (Ohio UP, 2021)
December 21, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourNew oral histories from Black Namibian and Angolan troops who fought in apartheid South Africa’s security forces reveal their involvement, and its impact on their lives, to be far more complicated than most historical scholarship has acknowledged. In anticolonial struggles across the African continent, tens of thousands of African soldiers served in the militaries of colonial and settler states. In southern Africa, they often made up the bulk of these militaries and, in some contexts, far out...
Gill Grose: A Volunteer Librarian Changing Lives in South Africa
December 20, 2021 10:00 - 59 minutesGill has been s a volunteer librarian at Claremont Primary School in Cape Town South Africa since 2010. Through her initiative she has been able to give several hundred children aged 6-14 from largely disadvantaged backgrounds access to books and advice about reading. She believes that this has been life changing for a significant number of her readers – as well as giving her life profound value. Gill is a great example of a social entrepreneur. Richard nominated her to speak at TEDxCapeTown,...
Jocelyn Hendrickson, "Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa" (Harvard UP, 2020)
December 17, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn her landmark new book Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa (Harvard UP, 2020), Jocelyn Hendrickson launches a searingly brilliant legal history centered on the question of how medieval and early modern Muslim jurists in Iberia and North Africa wrestled with various thorny questions of living under or migrating away from non-Muslim political sovereignty. This book combines meticulous social and political history with nimble and accessible readings of a vas...
Matthew H. Brown, "Indirect Subjects: Nollywood's Local Address" (Duke UP, 2021)
December 15, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn Indirect Subjects: Nollywood's Local Address (Duke UP, 2021), Matthew H. Brown analyzes the content of the prolific Nigerian film industry's mostly direct-to-video movies alongside local practices of production and circulation to show how screen media play spatial roles in global power relations. Scrutinizing the deep structural and aesthetic relationship between Nollywood, as the industry is known, and Nigerian state television, Brown tracks how several Nollywood films, in ways similar to...
Retief Muller, "The Scots Afrikaners: Identity Politics and Intertwined Religious Cultures in Southern and Central Africa" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
December 10, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourDrawing primarily on Dutch and Afrikaans archival sources including the Dutch Reformed Church Archive and private collections, Retief Muller's The Scots Afrikaners: Identity Politics and Intertwined Religious Cultures in Southern and Central Africa (Edinburgh UP, 2021) presents a trans-generational narrative of the influence and role played by diasporic Scots and their descendants in the religious and political lives of Dutch/ Afrikaner people in British colonial southern Africa. It demonstra...
Noémi Tousignant, "Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018)
December 09, 2021 09:00 - 50 minutesWhat is “capacity”? In science research and health interventions, it typically refers to the relative availability of equipment, infrastructure, personnel, and skills needed to get a job done. Noémi Tousignant’s book, Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal (Duke UP, 2018), feels its way into the experience of capacity to observe a crucial characteristic. Capacity has “temporal qualities.” Waiting, interrupting, prolonging, repairing: these processes ...
Tim Hartman, "Kwame Bediako: African Theology for a World Christianity" (Fortress Press, 2022)
December 08, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourKwame Bediako was one of the great African theologians of his generation. Challenging the assumption that Christianity is a Western religion, he presented a non-Western foundation for theological reflection, expanded the Christian theological imagination, and offered a path forward for post-Christendom theologies. Kwame Bediako: African Theology for a World Christianity (Fortress Press, 2022) is the first full-length introduction to Bediako’s theology. It engages Bediako’s central concerns wi...
Anne Hugon, "Etre mère en situation coloniale: Gold Coast (années 1910-1950)" (Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020)
December 06, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourFor a majority of African women, the “colonial encounter” occurred at the maternity ward, the health centre, or Maternal and Infant Welfare Centres. In Être mère en situation coloniale: Gold Coast (années 1910-1950) (Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020), Anne Hugon analyzes the consequences of colonialism on colonized women, through a history of maternal and child health institutions in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). How were colonial biomedical interventions around pregnancy and childbirth im...
Drew A. Thompson, "Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
December 06, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourPhotographers and their images were critical to the making of Mozambique, first as a colony of Portugal and then as independent nation at war with apartheid in South Africa. When the Mozambique Liberation Front came to power, it invested substantial human and financial resources in institutional structures involving photography, and used them to insert the nation into global debates over photography's use. The materiality of the photographs created had effects that neither the colonial nor po...