New Books Network Podcast

Human Rights December 4, 2022

Transitional Justice

Ruti G. Teitel

Hosted by Lavinia Stan

Societies that are throwing off the yoke of authoritarian rule and beginning to build democracies face a daunting question: should they punish the representatives of the ancien regime or let …

African Studies December 3, 2022

Decolonizing 1968

Transnational Student Activism in Tunis, Paris, and Dakar

Burleigh Hendrickson

Hosted by Elisa Prosperetti

Decolonizing 1968: Transnational Student Activism in Tunis, Paris, and Dakar (Cornell UP, 2022) explores how activists in 1968 transformed university campuses across Europe and North Africa into sites of contestation …

African Studies December 1, 2022

Christianity, Politics and the Afterlives of War in Uganda

There is Confusion

Henni Alava

Hosted by Suvi Rautio

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Dr. Henni Alava, postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University, on her fascinating new book published by Bloomsbury as part of the New Directions in Anthropology …

African Studies November 29, 2022

Space, Place and Identity

Wodaabe of Niger in the 21st Century

Florian Köhler

Hosted by Maggie Freeman

Known as highly mobile cattle nomads, the Wodaabe in Niger are today increasingly engaged in a transformation process towards a more diversified livelihood based primarily on agro-pastoralism and urban work …

Anthropology November 29, 2022

Afro-Sweden

Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country

Ryan Thomas Skinner

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

Contemporary Sweden is a country with a worldwide progressive reputation, despite an undeniable tradition of racism within its borders. In the face of this contradiction of culture and history, Afro-Swedes …

African Studies November 28, 2022

Many Black Women of this Fortress

Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire

Kwasi Konadu

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

Kwasi Konadu's book Many Black Women of this Fortress: Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire (Hurst, 2022) presents rare evidence about the lives of three African women …

African Studies November 22, 2022

African Ecomedia

Network Forms, Planetary Politics

Cajetan Iheka

Hosted by Sara Katz

In African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics (Duke UP, 2021), Cajetan Iheka examines the ecological footprint of media in Africa alongside the representation of environmental issues in visual culture. Iheka …

African Studies November 21, 2022

Social Justice at Apartheid's Dawn

African Women Intellectuals and the Quest to Save the Nation

Dawne Y. Curry

Hosted by Amanda Joyce Hall

Dawne Y. Curry’s Social Justice at Apartheid’s Dawn: African Women Intellectuals and the Quest to Save the Nation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), which examines the role of African women in the conversation …

Scholarly Communication November 11, 2022

Archives of Times Past

Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History

Cynthia Kros, John Wright, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, and Helen Ludlow

Hosted by Jen Hoyer

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History (Wits University Press, 2022) is an exploration of particular sources of evidence on southern Africa’s early history. It gathers recent ideas …

Economics November 11, 2022

Divided Environments

An International Political Ecology of Climate Change, Water and Security

Jan Selby, Gabrielle Daoust, and Clemens Hoffmann

Hosted by Sidney Michelini

What are the implications of climate change for twenty-first-century conflict and security? Rising temperatures, it is often said, will bring increased drought, more famine, heightened social vulnerability, and large-scale political …

Medicine November 9, 2022

All That Was Not Her

Todd Meyers

Hosted by Claire Clark

While studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Meyers met a woman named Beverly. In All That Was …

On Religion November 8, 2022

On Religious Pluralism in South Africa

A Discussion with Lee Scharnick-Udemans

Lee Scharnick-Udemans

Hosted by Gregory Soden

Lee-Shae Salma Scharnick-Udemans is the Senior Researcher in the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape. With degrees in religious studies and …

African Studies November 4, 2022

Rage and Carnage in the Name of God

Religious Violence in Nigeria

Abiodun Alao

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In Rage and Carnage in the Name of God (Duke University Press, 2022), Dr. Abiodun Alao examines the emergence of a culture of religious violence in postindependence Nigeria, where Christianity …

General History November 3, 2022

King Leopold's Ghostwriter

The Creation of Persons and States in the Nineteenth Century

Andrew Fitzmaurice

Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Eminent jurist, Oxford professor, advocate to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Travers Twiss (1809–1897) was a model establishment figure in Victorian Britain, and a close collaborator of Prince Metternich, the architect …

Latino Studies November 1, 2022

The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature

Sarah Quesada

Hosted by Anna Lindner

The African Heritage of Latinx and Caribbean Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2022) unearths a buried African archive within widely-read Latinx writers of the last fifty years. It challenges dominant narratives in World …

Anthropology October 24, 2022

Amphibious Subjects

Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana

Kwame Edwin Otu

Hosted by Reighan Gillam

Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana (University of California Press, 2022) is an ethnographic study of a community of self-identified effeminate men--known in local parlance …

Indian Ocean World October 24, 2022

Under Empire

Muslim Lives and Loyalties Across the Indian Ocean World, 1775–1945

Michael Francis Laffan

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi

Michael Francis Laffan’s Under Empire: Muslim Lives and Loyalties Across the Indian Ocean World, 1775–1945 (Columbia University Press, 2022) traces a tapestry of historical actors, empires, and ideas across the …

Film October 21, 2022

Black Panther

Scott Bukatman

Hosted by Joel Tscherne

Black Panther was the first Black superhero in mainstream American comics. Black Panther was a cultural phenomenon that broke box office records. Yet it wasn’t just a movie led by …

Medieval History October 21, 2022

The Sea in the Middle

The Mediterranean World, 650-1650

Thomas E. Burman, Brian A. Catlos, and Mark D. Meyerson

Hosted by Evan Zarkadas

The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650 (U California Press, 2022) presents an original and revisionist narrative of the development of the medieval west from late antiquity to the …

Political Science October 17, 2022

Global Norms and Local Action

The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa

Peace A. Medie

Hosted by Lamis Abdelaaty

In Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford UP, 2020), Peace A. Medie studies the domestic implementation of international norms by examining how and …