New Books Network
Caribbean Studies
Latin American Studies October 22, 2021

Disruptive Archives

Feminist Memories of Resistance in Latin America's Dirty Wars

Viviana Beatriz MacManus

Hosted by Minni Sawhney
Today I talked to Viviana MacManus, author of Disruptive Archives: Feminist Memories of Resistance in Latin America’s Dirty Wars published by the University of Illinois Press in 2020. It has …

Caribbean Studies

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Interviews with scholars of the Caribbean about their new books.

Literature October 12, 2021

Migrations

J. L. Torres

Hosted by Minni Sawhney
Migrations (LA Review of Books, 2021) is a collection of short stories by the Puerto Rican born writer and now retired university professor J. L. Torres. Each story condenses a bit of …
African Studies October 11, 2021

Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa

Kalle Kananoja

Hosted by Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia
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 …
Anthropology October 4, 2021

Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba

Takkara K. Brunson

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba (University of Florida Press, 2021), Dr. Takkara Brunson examines the political strategies used by Afro-Cuban women between 1886 and 195 …
Environmental Studies September 3, 2021

No Wood, No Kingdom

Political Ecology in the English Atlantic

Keith Pluymers

Hosted by Matthew Brown
Pushing back against the traditional narratives assuming that the American colonies served as resource “windfalls” which released Europe from the constraints of dwindling resources, No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology …
General History August 31, 2021

Madhouse

Psychiatry and Politics in Cuban History

Jennifer L. Lambe

Hosted by Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente
"On the outskirts of Havana lies Mazorra, an asylum known to--and at times feared by--ordinary Cubans for over a century. Since its founding in 1857, the island's first psychiatric hospital …
General History August 23, 2021

The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica

Stanley Mirvis

Hosted by Grant Kleiser
Stanley Mirvis' The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: A Testamentary History of a Diaspora in Transition (Yale University Press, 2020) offers an in-depth look at the Portuguese Jews of Jamaica and their connections …
General History August 18, 2021

Cuban Memory Wars

Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile

Michael J. Bustamante

Hosted by Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente
I had the pleasure of interviewing my mentor, Dr. Michael J. Bustamante on his first monograph, Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile which was published in March 2021 as part …
Gender Studies August 16, 2021

Translocas

The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Hosted by Isabel Machado
Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (U Michigan Press, 2021) focuses on drag and transgender performance and activism in Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Arguing for …
General History August 6, 2021

Celia Sánchez Manduley

The Life and Legacy of a Cuban Revolutionary

Tiffany A. Sippial

Hosted by Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente
I sat down with Dr. Tiffany Sippial to talk about her latest book, Celia Sanchez Manduley: The Life and Legacy of a Cuban Revolutionary (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) …
Critical Theory August 4, 2021

Sonic Intimacy

Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos

Malcolm James

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
How can music change the world? In Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury, 2020), Malcolm James, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies …
Latin American Studies August 3, 2021

Dancing with the Revolution

Power, Politics, and Privilege in Cuba

Elizabeth B. Schwall

Hosted by Rachel Newman
In Dancing with the Revolution: Power, Politics, and Privilege in Cuba (UNC Press, 2021), Elizabeth B. Schwall aligns culture and politics by focusing on an art form that became a darling of …
General History July 22, 2021

Slave Revolt on Screen

The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

Hosted by Michael Vann
Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and …
Geography July 7, 2021

Energy Islands

Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico

Catalina M. de Onís

Hosted by Stentor Danielson
Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2021) provides an urgent and nuanced portrait of collective action that resists racial capitalism, colonialism …
Caribbean Studies July 5, 2021

The Digital Black Atlantic

Roopika Risam and Kelly Baker Josephs

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These …
Philosophy June 24, 2021

Colonial Debts

The Case of Puerto Rico

Rocío Zambrana

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
What can debt reveal to us about coloniality and its undoing? In Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, 2021), Rocío Zambrana theorizes the way debt has …
General History June 17, 2021

Laboring for the State

Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1971

Rachel Hynson

Hosted by Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente
Contrary to claims that socialism opposed the family unit, in Laboring for the State: Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1971 (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Rachel Hynson argues that the revolutionary …
Celebration Studies June 9, 2021

Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas

Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

Cécile Fromont

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
Edited by Dr. Cécile Fromont, Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition (Penn State University Press, 2019), demonstrates how, from the beginning of the Atlantic …
Speaking of . . . with Uli Baer May 27, 2021

Marlene Daut on the Haitian Revolution in Literature

Great Books Series

Marlene Daut

Hosted by Uli Baer
To learn more about the Haitian Revolution in fiction, I spoke with Professor Marlene Daut specialized in pre-20th-century Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. Her first …
General History May 26, 2021

Military Medicine and the Making of Race

Life and Death in the West India Regiments, 1795–1874

Tim Lockley

Hosted by Grant Kleiser
Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Tim Lockley demonstrates how Britain's black soldiers helped shape attitudes towards race …