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. 3d ago

    Governing Islam in Austria and Germany, with Farid Hafez

    In this episode, hosts Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Farid Hafez to discuss his most recently published book Governing Islam in Austria and Germany: From Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford UP, 2026). Hafez’s recent work centres on the comparative analysis of the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the German rule in Tanzania, Togo and Cameroon, and in particular their respective treatment of Muslims in each case to then in turn shed light on the current governing of Muslimness in both. Farid Hafez is an assistant professor in International Relations at William and Mary, and also a senior researcher at Georgetown University. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 3d ago

    Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712 with Nat Cutter (Oxford UP, 2026)

    From the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century, a wide network of English-speaking men, women, and children took up residence in the Ottoman Maghrebi regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. There they formed expatriate communities, engaged with the societies around them, and undertook their businesses, from trading to captivity redemption to international politics.Moving beyond official diplomatic records and printed texts, Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712: Merchants, Consuls, and Cultural Exchange (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nat Cutter delves into thousands of personal letters and financial records, where we find friendship, conflict, adoration, derision, manipulation, and scandal across cultures and countries. In so doing, it offers new ways of thinking about British-Maghrebi relations in a transitional age for global trade and military-naval power, moving beyond plaintive consular complaints, gunboat diplomacy, and brutal captivity to accommodate positive cooperation and mutual benefit.These expatriates became embedded mediators, hybridised European and Ottoman cultural forms, and experienced distanciation from both homeland and hostland to enjoy and manipulate both. For them, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were not solely sites for danger or exploitation but, as peace was progressively established with each regency, increasingly places for pragmatic cooperation, personal and professional advancement, commercial success, and enjoyment.Expansive networks of correspondence and cooperation around the Maghreb, Mediterranean, and Britain embedded the expatriates in a cross-cultural trade in material goods and information and allowed them to manipulate the course of trade and diplomacy between Britain and the Maghreb. The expatriates were less marginal, miserable, and misbehaving Britons and more embedded, canny, Mediterranean actors. Nat Cutter, Mary Lugton Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Lecturer in History, University of Melbourne 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. Oct 11

    The French Médersa: Islamic Education and Empire in Northwest Africa with Samuel D. Anderson (Cornell UP, 2026)

    The French Médersa: Islamic Education and Empire in Northwest Africa (Cornell UP, 2026) explores how the French state pursued a century-long project of bicultural Franco-Muslim education in its northwest African colonies, resulting in a new type of school, the médersa, that combined French and Islamic curricula. French officials frequently described these schools and their students as "hyphens," drawing connections between larger French and Islamic forces. Samuel D. Anderson highlights this hyphenating idea, situating Franco-Muslim education between beliefs about not only France and Islam but also about tradition and modernity and about North and West Africa. The médersa project had two goals: to create an elite class of Muslims friendly to the French imperial project and, subsequently, to mold Islam into a form that could be more easily controlled. A total of ten médersas opened across Algeria, Senegal, French Soudan, and Mauritania and closed only in the 1950s. The graduates of these schools, the medérsiens, went on to shape their societies profoundly but not always in the ways the French anticipated. Drawing on archival and oral sources from Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal, and France, The French Médersa proposes new ways to approach trans-Saharan history. Anderson argues that across northwest Africa, and for more than a century, Franco-Muslim education was central to the history of the French empire and Islamic education alike. Samuel D. Anderson is history teacher at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Oct 10

    An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa with Elisa Prosperetti (Cambridge UP, 2026)

    In An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa (Cambridge UP, 2026), Elisa Prosperetti argues that while racialized, colonial notions of development saw African bodies as the primary sites of economic value, anticolonial development imagined the minds of Africans as the key to economic productivity. Thus, the broadening of access to Europhone education (that is, using European languages) was a central component of anticolonial and antiracist visions of an emancipated African future. But this educationally-driven vision of the future had deep roots, calling back to other experiences of freedom, however partial, in the Black Atlantic world. Thus, the book further argues that the forms that decolonization took in coastal West Africa are best explained by framing decolonization as a Black Atlantic emancipation, akin to 19th-century slavery abolitions. Although decolonization in West Africa shared parallels with what happened across other parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East after World War II, a Black Atlantic frame accounts for certain regional specificities that the general process/category of decolonization does not. Combining more than sixty interviews with former students, teachers, and school administrators with research in state and institutional archives in West Africa, Europe, and the United States, An Anticolonial Development analyzes the rise and fall of public education as the principal project of anticolonial development in West Africa. Elisa Prosperetti is a historian at the National Institute of Education (part of the Nanyang Technological University) in Singapore. Her research focuses on modern African and global history, particularly histories of diaspora, education, race, development, economic and intellectual history, and decolonization. Her first book, An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa, was published in 2026 by Cambridge University Press. She received her MA (2015) and PhD (2019) degrees in History from Princeton University and her BSc in International History and International Relations from the London School of Economics (2008). Prior to graduate school, she worked for several years as a classroom teacher. You can learn more about Dr. Prosperetti’s work here   Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Oct 6

    Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity with Samar Abdel-Rahman (American U of Cairo Press, 2026)

    Samar Abdel-Rahman's Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity (American University of Cairo Press, 2026) explores male stardom in Egyptian cinema produced during the early years following the Free Officers' revolution of 1952, through the lives and careers of three key stars: Omar al-Sharif, Ismail Yassin, and Farid Shawqi. In attempting to find a balance between the traditional and the modern, the Nasser era placed an emphasis on education, work, and gender equality. Yet, faithfulness to Egyptian traditions and values remained a key part of the state’s vision of collective identity. Samar illuminates how these stars promoted a civic identity that aligned with the regime’s ambitions, and how each of them—through melodrama, comedy, and action—negotiated a different facet of masculine identity that spoke to the ambivalent constructions of hegemonic masculinity during this critical post-colonial period. Samar Abdel-Rahman holds a PhD in film studies from King's College London and  is currently a lecturer of World Cinema at the University of Liverpool. Her research, which focuses on stardom and performance in Middle Eastern and North African Cinemas, has been published in edited volumes including The Routledge Companion to European Cinema. Saman Nasser holds an MA in world history from James Madison University, where he currently works as an educational staff. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Oct 3

    The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa with Adam Rovner (U California Press, 2025)

    This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa (U California Press, 2025) tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West Africa, including Freetown, Sierra Leone. There, tasked by the colonial governor to end the local slave trade, Isaacs brokered deals that reinforced his own power.Adam Rovner’s meticulous archival research in England, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and St. Helena, coupled with his own travels to the remnants of Isaacs’ island stronghold in Guinea, brings this complex figure to life. Through Isaacs’ story, Rovner exposes the entangled forces of Jewish emancipation and antisemitism, slavery and abolition, the stark dichotomies of civilization and “savagery,” and the creation of whiteness versus Blackness. Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He is the author of In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014). Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Sep 29

    Compromised Coalitions: The Paradox of Postconflict Power Sharing in Africa with Alexander Noyes (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

    When an election turns violent and neither side will concede, why is the usual answer to put both sides in the same government? Alex Noyes has spent nearly two decades asking whether that reflex works. Compromised Coalitions: The Paradox of Post-Conflict Power Sharing in Africa out in 2026 from the University of Pennsylvania Press, draws on more than 120 interviews with senior politicians and stakeholders in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Togo to give an unsettling answer.  Power sharing can advance democratic reform, but only when two conditions hold: inclusive politics among the parties, and outside enforcers willing to hold them to the deal. Both are rare. And even where the deal ends the killing, it rewards a losing incumbent with unearned power and sets a precedent. In our conversation, Noyes explains why more than 600 such pacts have been struck since the Cold War, what the neglected Togo case reveals, and why he argues these arrangements should almost never be used after election violence.  Against the scholarly consensus, Noyes finds these pacts can deliver real democratic reform, but only under conditions that rarely hold, and always at the cost of a compromised start. The costs outweigh the gains, and policymakers should stop defaulting to the model. Our guest is Alex Noyes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology. Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Sep 24

    Karline McLain, "Living with Gandhi: Experiments in Utopia" (Association for Asian Studies, 2026)

    Mahatma Gandhi was an anticolonial activist, lawyer, and politician. Less famously, but no less importantly, he was also a back-to-the-land farmer, a founder of communes, and a seeker of utopia. Living with Gandhi: Experiments in Utopia tells the story of everyday life at four of Gandhi's communities in India and South Africa. It explores who lived at each community alongside Gandhi, the experiments they undertook in the shared pursuit of universal wellbeing, and the connections that were forged between daily life and larger socio-political issues such as racial inequality, caste reform, and anticolonial activism. The need to simplify life and focus on the greater good is no less urgent now than it was in Gandhi's time. Reading about Gandhi's communities allows us to think about a range of topics that can help us to formulate our own conception of the good life, including how to spend our finite time together on this earth; how the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion operate in our daily lives; and whether or to what extent self-sacrifice is necessary for universal wellbeing. Online Archive: here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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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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