New Books in African Studies

New Books in African Studies


Latest Episodes

Jacob Mundy, "Libya" (Polity Press, 2018)
September 07, 2020

Mundy's book is part-history, part-political science to guide readers through the intricate maze of foreign and Libyan actors and institutions that define modern day Libya...

Jeff Schauer, "Wildlife between Empire and Nation in 20th-Century Africa" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
September 02, 2020

Schauer explains how this global attention to African wildlife evolved from late nineteenth century to the present...

Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of the Mediterranean" (Little Brown, 2020)
August 31, 2020

A history of the "middle sea" from prehistory to today....

Jessica Marie Johnson, "Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
August 28, 2020

Johnson explores the nature of these complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world....

Hideaki Suzuki, "Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean: Suppression and Resistance in the 19th Century" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
August 27, 2020

Suzuki provides an insightful perspective to the growing scholarship on Indian Ocean slavery by shifting focus onto those who profited from the slave trade...

Oumar Ba, "States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
August 26, 2020

Ba theorizes the ways in which states that are presumed to be weaker in the international system use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advance their security and political interests....

Zachary Valentine Wright, "Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the 18th-Century Muslim World" (UNC Press, 2020)
August 21, 2020

Wright maps the intellectual history of the largest Sufi order in West and North Africa, the Tijaniyya...

Benjamin Talton, "In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics" (Pennsylvania UP, 2019)
August 19, 2020

Talton a transnational history that explores the influence of African American leaders on US foreign policy towards Africa in the 1980s....

Ravi Palat, "The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650" (Palgrave, 2015)
August 19, 2020

Palat counters eurocentric notions of long-term historical change by drawing upon the histories of societies based on wet-rice cultivation to chart an alternate pattern of social evolution and state formation...

Erik Gellman, "Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay" (Chicago UP, 2020)
August 13, 2020

What does democracy look like? And when should we cause trouble to pursue it?