Marissa Moorman (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, African Cultural Studies) on Angolan social history and media studies. We discuss the evolving trajectory of her scholarship, research in southern Africa and Portugal, and her latest book, Powerful F

Episode 131: Black Women, Slavery, and Freedom

Jun 22nd, 2021 55m 57s

Historian Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins Univ.) digs into her award-winning new book, Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World. The conversation brings out how Black women in Senegambia, the Caribbean, and Lo

Episode 130: African Sports Studies

Feb 24th, 2021 42m 54s

Dr. Gerard Akindes discusses his experience playing and coaching basketball in West Africa and Europe, and the new Basketball Africa League. He considers the role of “electronic colonialism” in the sport media landscape and then reflects on his

Episode 129: Pan-African Scholarship, Black Entrepreneurship, and Digital African Studies

Dec 14th, 2020 47m 48s

Dr. Chambi Chachage (Princeton) discusses his intellectual journey from Dar es Salaam to Cape Town, Edinburgh, and Cambridge, Mass., his book manuscript on the history of Black entrepreneurs in Dar, and the changing role of digital humanities i

Episode 128: Cherif Keita’s Life in African Studies

Dec 11th, 2019 34m 26s

Cherif Keita (French and Francophone Studies, Carleton College) reflects on his life as a scholar from Mali and on his documentary films about John Langalibalele Dube and Nokutela Dube, founding figures of the African National Congress of South

Episode 127: AIDS Interventions, Elections in Malawi, and Digital Scholarship

Nov 5th, 2019 35m 20s

Kim Yi Dionne (Political Science, UC Riverside) on her recent book, Doomed Interventions: The Failure of Global Responses to AIDS in Africa; the controversial May 2019 elections in Malawi, where she served as an observer; and hosting the Ufaham

Episode 126: South(ern) Africa, Guinea, and Histories of Foreign Interventions

Oct 22nd, 2019 50m 34s

Elizabeth Schmidt (History, Loyola Maryland) on her activist beginnings and professional trajectory as an historian, first of Shona women in colonial Zimbabwe and later of Guinea’s independence movement. The second part of the interview focuses

Episode 125: Gangs, Identity, and Power in Congo

May 1st, 2019 33m 55s

Didier Gondola (IUPUI, History and Africana Studies) on his book, Tropical Cowboys: Westerns, Violence, and Masculinity in Kinshasa. He reflects on how Hollywood Westerns shaped a performative young urban masculinity expressed through nicknames

Episode 124: Cooking Data

Apr 2nd, 2019 36m 2s

Cal Biruk (Oberlin, Anthropology) on the politics of knowledge production in African fieldwork. We talk about her new book, Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World, based on HIV and AIDS research in Malawi. The discussio

Episode 123: Boko Haram

Mar 7th, 2019 37m 49s

Alex Thurston (Miami University) discusses his recent book, Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement. Taking local religious ideas and experiences seriously, Thurston sheds light on northeastern Nigeria and the main leaders of Bo

Episode 122: Hip-Hop in Africa

Feb 14th, 2019 29m 52s

Msia Kibona Clark (African Studies, Howard University) on her new book, Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers. Clark describes how her personal passion became academic expertise. She highlights African women emcees

Episode 121: Refugees in African History

Dec 12th, 2018 31m 42s

Bonny Ibhawoh (McMaster Univ.) and Christian Williams (U. Free State) on historicizing refugees in Africa. Looking at children evacuated from the Biafran War to Gabon and Ivory Coast, Ibhawoh discusses the politics of “refugee” labeling. Willia

Episode 120: Jazz Music and African Borderlands

Nov 7th, 2018 39m 10s

David Coplan (Wits, Emeritus) takes us on a journey from New York to Soweto and into the making of his ethnographic studies of music and popular culture in West and South(ern) Africa. Coplan then turns to his recent book about The Bassline jazz

Episode 119: Rethinking African Humanities

Oct 29th, 2018 30m 18s

Jean Allman (Washington U.) on rethinking African humanities. She discusses her research on Ghana, women, and gender, and highlights the transformative potential of collaborative work. Allman reflects on African Studies publishing networks and

Episode 118: Social Justice in South Africa

Oct 8th, 2018 38m 23s

Prof. Somadoda Fikeni (UNISA) and Nomzamo Ntombela (Stellenbosch) reflect on continuities and changes in South African social justice activism. Fikeni and Ntombela share their respective personal and political experiences, connecting the motive

Episode 117: Albie Sachs on Fighting Apartheid and Building South African Constitutionalism

May 17th, 2018 48m 20s

Albie Sachs, former judge, freedom fighter, and professor, speaks (and sings!) about his anti-apartheid activism and lifelong commitment to equality and justice. He reflects on the enduring need for “soft vengeance” and draws on his 15-year ter

Episode 116: Empire, Missions, and Culture in Southern Africa

Feb 13th, 2018 38m 33s

Prof. Norman Etherington (U. Western Australia) on empire in Africa, missions, and Southern African history. The interview focuses on themes of his distinguished career and influential works, such as The Great Treks, and his latest books Indige

Episode 115: Youth Struggles

Nov 29th, 2017 31m 50s

Dr. Alcinda Honwana on the struggles of young Africans, the condition of “waithood”—a state of limbo between childhood and adulthood—and their creative engagements with everyday life. She reflects on the art and ethics of oral interviewing in M

Episode 114: Digital Archive of Malian Photography

Nov 2nd, 2017 31m 31s

Youssouf Sakaly and Malick Sitou discuss the Archive of Malian Photography, a collaborative Malian-US project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the British Library, that provides free access to preserved and digitized coll

Episode 113: East African Borderlands: Somalia, Kenya, and Belonging

Oct 10th, 2017 29m 7s

Keren Weitzberg (Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London) on her new book We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya. She grapples with the long history of Somali migration across colonia

Episode 112: Zimbabwe’s Politics of Economic Decline

Jun 18th, 2017 24m 6s

Prof. Alois Mlambo (University of Pretoria) discusses Zimbabwe’s deindustrialization and economic decline, its relationship with South Africa, and the role of Pan-Africanism and “patriotic history” in sustaining a new authoritarian nationalism.

Episode 111: Indian Ocean Africa—Icons, Commodities, Mobility

May 24th, 2017 38m 40s

Jeremy Prestholdt (U. California, San Diego) on East African commodities, culture, and “transnational imagination,” featuring his forthcoming book, Icons of Dissent (on Che, Marley, Tupac, Bin Laden). He also discusses changing meanings of Indi

Episode 110: The Story of Swahili

Apr 27th, 2017 40m 51s

John Mugane (Harvard University) on his book, The Story of Swahili, a history of the international language and its speakers. Mugane sheds light on enduring questions: Who is Swahili? What is authentic Swahili? He also discusses the state of pu

Episode 109: Doing Mozambican History—Dams, Development & Going Digital

Apr 5th, 2017 21m 48s

Allen Isaacman (University of Minnesota) discusses his recent Herskovits Award-winning book, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007, how the work was researched, its significan

Episode 108: Ajami in African History

Mar 3rd, 2017 38m 39s

Fallou Ngom (African Languages Director, Boston U.) on his new book Muslims Beyond the Arab World: the Odyssey of Ajami and the Muridiyya. Focusing on Senegambia and Ahmadu Bamba, Ngom discusses Ajami literary texts — African languages in Arabi