New Books Network

About Sharika Crawford

Sharika Crawford is a social historian of Latin America and the circum-Caribbean. Much of her work has studied the histories of African-descended, English-speaking communities within Spanish-speaking republics such as the Colombian islands of San Andrés and Providencia. Beyond her scholarship, she also sees herself as a world history educator seeking to find ways to better integrate the historical voices of Africans and Latin Americans into broader global narratives of the past.

Sharika Crawford is an associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and the author of The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Waterscapes of Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

Sharika's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Sharika:

World Affairs March 10, 2021

American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination

Amanda Brickell Bellows

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
This ambitious work explores the literary and cultural production about Russian peasants and African Americans in the post-emancipation period. Brickell Bellows draws on visual images from advertisements to oil paintings as …
Architecture February 11, 2021

Architecture in Global Socialism

Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War

Łukasz Stanek

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East …
Caribbean Studies January 20, 2021

Rogue Revolutionaries

The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean

Vanessa Mongey

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
The University of Pennsylvania describes Mongey's work as follows. "When we think of the Age of Revolutions, George Washington, Robespierre, Toussaint Louverture, or Simon Bolivar might come to mind. But Rogue Revolutionaries …
Caribbean Studies December 29, 2020

Blood on the River

A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

Marjoleine Kars

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (New Press, 2020), historian Marjoleine Kars tells the story of a massive eighteenth-century slave rebellion in the Dutch …
Caribbean Studies December 22, 2020

From the Tricontinental to the Global South

Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity

Anne Garland Mahler

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Duke UP, 2018), Anne Garland Mahler traces the history and intellectual legacy of the understudied global justice …
Literary Studies October 21, 2020

Black Land

Imperial Ethiopianism and African America

Nadia Nurhussein

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America (Princeton University Press, 2019), Nadia Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth century African American cultural engagement with and literary depictions of imperial …
Caribbean Studies September 23, 2020

No Limits to Their Sway

Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions

Edgardo Pérez Morales

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions (Vanderbilt University Press, 2018), Edgardo Pérez Morales investigates the hemispheric connections between the …
American Studies July 24, 2020

Sovereign Acts

Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone

Katherine Zien

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In Sovereign Acts: Performing Race, Space, and Belonging in Panama and the Canal Zone (Rutgers University Press, 2017), Katherine Zien examines the ways politicians, activists, artists, and residents performed and …
African Studies June 24, 2020

Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators

African Americans in Ghana

Steven J. L. Taylor

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
African Americans have a long history of emigration. In Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators: African Americans in Ghana, Steven J. L. Taylor explores the second wave of African American exiles or …
Caribbean Studies June 23, 2020

Isles of Noise

Sonic Media in the Caribbean

Alejandra Bronfman

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
The Caribbean has figuratively and literally been entangled in processes of global integration earlier than other parts of the Americas. In Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean (UNC …
Caribbean Studies June 10, 2020

Tides of Revolution

Information, Insurgencies, and the Crisis of Colonial Rule in Venezuela

Cristina Soriano

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In Tides of Revolution: Information, Insurgencies, and the Crisis of Colonial Rule in Venezuela (University of New Mexico Press, 2018), Cristina Soriano examines the links between the spread of radical …
Art June 9, 2020

The Politics of Taste

Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetics

Ana María Reyes

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In The Politics of Taste: Beatriz González and Cold War Aesthetics (Duke University Press, 2019), Ana María Reyes examines the ways Colombian artist Beatriz González and Argentine-born art critic Marta …
African Studies June 1, 2020

Jah Kingdom

Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization

Monique A. Bedasse

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization (UNC Press, 2017), examines Rastafarian repatriation to Tanzania in the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, Monique A. Bedasse …
Latin American Studies May 29, 2020

Guerrilla Marketing

Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia

Alexander L. Fattal

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia (University of Chicago Press, 2019) investigates the Colombian government’s campaign to turn Marxist guerrilla fighters in the FARC into consumer citizens. In this …
Food May 19, 2020

Rice in the Time of Sugar

The Political Economy of Food in Cuba

Louis A. Pérez

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In his book, Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba (UNC Press, 2019), Louis A. Pérez, Jr. explores how Cuba’s dependency on the sugar …
African American Studies May 14, 2020

Troubling Freedom

Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation

Natasha J. Lightfoot

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation (Duke University Press, 2015), Natasha J. Lightfoot traces the ways Antiguans and Barbudans experienced freedom in the immediate years before …