New Books in African Studies

Marshall Poe
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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  1. 2h ago

    Mhoze Chikowero, "The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe" (MIT Press, 2026)

    The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Mhoze Chikowero is the story of the making of post-independence Zimbabwe from the sounds and songs born of the country’s armed liberation wars, waged against British Rhodesian white settler rule since the 1890s.The war from 1896 through the twentieth century to resist the initial colonization, as well as the one waged to reclaim land from the colonial farmers in the 2000s, is known as Chimurenga, and the music it produced is thus called Chimurenga music. The sounds and music were Afrosonic—that is, deeply grounded in the ideology of the 1960s–70s war, spawning the cultural liberation of a people whose self-expression the colonial system had criminalized and oppressed for close to a century.The living labs of the liberation war, Chimurenga, powered not just military but also cultural rearmament, thereby producing cultural blueprints for a confident, regenerative public consciousness and expressiveness as independence. The open-access title captures the sounds of self-liberation, framing a state of militant audibility in public cultural expressiveness, public policy propagation, and contestation. It invites readers to imagine, see, hear, and feel self-liberation war redeployed as popular entertainment in the service of state making. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  2. Aug 17

    Edward E. Andrews, "Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America" (Cornell UP, 2025)

    Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America (Cornell UP, 2025) explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who went on to become one of early America's most important Black leaders.  In the mid-eighteenth century, Marycoo was taken from West Africa to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was forced into racial bondage and given a name that symbolized the power that his new city and new enslaver held over him: Newport Gardner. In this powerful book, Edward E. Andrews pieces together newspaper articles, church records, letters, and Gardner's own writings to tell the story of his life. After acquiring his freedom via a winning lottery ticket in 1791, Gardner became a kind of Founding Father for Newport's free Black community. He established and led several Black benevolent organizations that helped the community navigate the complicated waters of freedom as Rhode Island slowly began the process of emancipation. He became a popular educator to young Black Newporters, and also emerged as a key religious figure, serving as a long-standing pillar of Newport's First Congregational Church and later founding an independent Black church in the 1820s. His final act was leading a group of about three dozen Black New Englanders to Liberia, in hopes that a new start in Africa would be better than the discrimination they faced in America. A richly textured account, Newport Gardner's Anthem tells the story of a forgotten Black leader while exploring the new, but tragically limited, opportunities for formerly enslaved people in the post-Revolutionary world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  3. Aug 14

    Hossam el-Hamalawy, "Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic (Verso Books, 2026)

    Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic (Verso Books, 2026) is a rare and comprehensive examination of the structures, hierarchies, and methods of the military, police, and intelligence agencies. Drawing on meticulous research, it reveals the strategies deployed to suppress the revolutionary wave, from propaganda and surveillance to mass arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings. El-Hamalawy traces the power dynamics within these institutions to show how their uneasy unity was both a response to the revolution and a determinant of its eventual fate. Hossam el-Hamalawy is a journalist and socialist from Cairo, who was among the organisers of the 2011 uprising. He has been involved in the labour movement and the fight against police brutality in Egypt. He holds a PhD in political science from Freie Universität Berlin and is the recipient of the 2011 Anna Politkovskaya Journalism Award. He publishes a weekly newsletter on Egyptian politics at 3arabawy.substack.com. Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) researching the political economy of nitrogen fertilizer supply chains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  4. Aug 5

    Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu

    "In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a war in which his father had fought. This is the story of his childhood journey through the chaos of that new country's birth to Britain, where he arrived alone, a teenager, burning with ambition but utterly lost in ways he had yet even to discover. Told with astonishing insight, his memoir describes the drama of his quest to belong and to succeed, and how his worldview was both shaped and shattered by Britain, ultimately setting him on a quest to uncover the truth of his parents' past. In excavating their story alongside his own, he brings us closer than ever before to understanding one of the greatest upheavals in modern times - the freeing of a continent from colonial rule - not as history or politics but as a psychological and emotional force, one that divides families from within, even while those same divisions bind them fiercely together across time. Read the transcript here. Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics at the Oxford Department of International Development and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University. He is broadly interested in the politics of global health and epidemics, race and identity, citizenship and activist movements, with a regional focus on Africa and the African diaspora. Simukai is the author of The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe (Cambridge University Press, 2020), an examination of the social and political causes and consequences of Zimbabwe’s catastrophic cholera outbreak in 2008/09, the most extensive in African history. This monograph won the Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award from the American and International Political Science Associations. He has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Uganda, The Gambia, and Tanzania, and has publications in several leading social science and medical journals. Simukai has recently published his first book for the trade, Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire, published by The Bodley Head and Crown in March 2026. This book combines memoir, political history and cultural criticism to show how colonialism continues to shape politics, society and culture in Africa and in Britain and to explore what it really means to decolonise. Prior to working in academia, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service. He holds a DPhil in International Development from the Oxford University for which he was awarded the biennial Audrey Richards Prize for the best doctoral thesis in African Studies examined at a UK university. Simukai teaches on the MPhil in Development Studies and supervises DPhil students. Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  5. Aug 2

    Paulina Banas, "Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)

    Following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East. In her debut book, Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) Paulina Banas analyzes the context and process of production of these highly illustrated publications, from their conceptualization to the finished product and its afterlife, from marketing to the sales of these books, and from circulation to their reception by nineteenth-century audiences. By tracing the long, arduous, and often risky publishing journeys of the makers of these books, including publishers, writers, and artists, such as the Frenchman Émile Prisse d’Avennes, Banas reveals a complex terrain of changing market demands, collaborations, and conflicting views, and the unsettled authorship of these works, prompting us to think more profoundly about artistic and intellectual exchange in the world of nineteenth-century Orientalist book production. Visualizing Egypt considers nineteenth-century book illustrations on Egypt and the “Orient” not merely as expressions of enduring ideology and colonial propaganda, but as representations shaped by the often-overlooked commercial exigencies of the growing publishing industry and the reckless competition within it. Paulina Banas is an Assistant Professor of Art History at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she teaches course on Islamic world arts, 19th century European visual culture, and cross-cultural encounters between Europe and the Middle East. Saman Nasser holds an M.A. in history from James Madison University, where he currently works as an educational staff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  6. Aug 2

    Thomas Richardson, "Soldiers and Bushmen: The Australian Army in South Africa, 1899–1902" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    Soldiers and Bushmen: The Australian Army in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Thomas Richardson examines the commitment to what was expected to be a short war. It presents a thematic, analytical history of the birth of the Australian Army in South Africa, while exploring the Army's evolution from colonial units into a consolidated federal force. Soldiers and Bushmen investigates the establishment of the 'bushmen experiment' – the belief that the unique qualities of rural Australians would solve tactical problems on the veldt. This, in turn, influenced ideals around leadership, loyalty and traditional combat that fed the mythology of the Australians as natural soldiers. The book also examines the conduct of the war itself: how the Army adapted to the challenges of a battlefield transformed by technology, and the moral questions posed by the transition to fighting a counterinsurgency campaign. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  7. Jul 25

    Samantha Iyer, "Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States" (Columbia UP, 2026)

    The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of the nineteenth century, which depended on its current and former colonies for food and raw materials, the United States produced vast agricultural surpluses. During the 1950s, an era of decolonization and rising Cold War competition, the United States became the dominant exporter of food staples to industrializing nations in the Third World through its massive food aid program. Through the lens of food and agriculture, Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Samantha Iyer offers new ways to understand the roots of the post–Second World War global order and the US position in it. Samantha Iyer traces how two former British territories and agricultural competitors of the United States, India and Egypt, became two of the largest importers of US food aid. She investigates the origins and consequences of the US-centric postwar food regime by examining changes in the production, distribution, and consumption of agricultural surpluses from the late nineteenth century to the early 1970s. Bringing together life in villages, towns, and cities with national, imperial, and international affairs, Dr. Iyer demonstrates that food aid was the expression of a changed political, economic, and ecological world that the United States did not create alone. Drawing on sources in Arabic, French, Urdu, and English, Agrarian Superpower is a groundbreaking comparative history of food, agriculture, and development. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

  8. Jul 24

    Grégory Pierrot, "Fantômes de la révolution noire: Une histoire culturelle transatlantique" (Ròt-Bò-Krik, 2026)

    Black Power! A name with a ring to it on both sides of the Atlantic, taken as a sign of Black American rage incarnated by a few names: Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, Angela Davis. Behind these archetypes of the 1960s and 70s stood a political movement as mutable as it was international, that of Black Power, with the goal of bringing about a global uprising. This insurrection of Black worlds has haunted the West for centuries, rumbling beneath the words of Frantz Fanon and Lorraine Hansberry, the films of Melvin Van Peebles and Sarah Maldoror, in the albums of Sun Ra and Archie Shepp, the poems of Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez. In Fantômes de la révolution noire: Une Histoire culturelle transatlantique ([Ghosts of the Black Revolution: A Transatlantic Cultural History] Éditions Ròt-Bò-Krik, 2026), Grégory Pierrot evokes the ghosts of Black Power and shows that the arts are real laboratories where the Black Revolution is formed, reinvented, and broadcast. Guest Grégory Pierrot is Associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where he studies the cultural and artistic networks of the Black Atlantic. In addition to Fantômes de la révolution noire published by Ròt-Bò-Krik earlier this year, Dr. Pierrot has translated and co-translated a series of essays and novels from and into French, and edited or co-edited several volumes concerning the literature of and about the Haitian revolution in French and English. He is also the author of The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture and Decolonize Hipsters. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript under review on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

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