New Books in African Studies

The unprecedented crime of the 1994 Rwandan genocide demanded an unconventional legal response. After failed attempts by the international legal system to efficiently handle legal cases stemming from the genocide, Rwandans decided to take matters into their own hands and reinstate Gacaca law, which had been the sole legal system in Rwanda prior to colonization. Gacaca, a Kinyarwanda word referring to a type of grass or traditional lawn, is also a metonym for place and mediation. Gacaca law allows perpetrators and victims to resolve their differences before the community, and a panel of eminent persons, inyangamugayo. Gacaca seeks not simply to punish crime but to repair the social fabric rent by crime. In his book Practical Challenges in Customary Law Translation: The Case Of Rwanda’s Gacaca Law (Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, 2015), Telesphore Ngarambe uses a fusion of cultural and translational studies, with emphasis placed on cultural contextualization, to make a unique contribution to the study of Gacaca law. Ngarambe argues that as law is embedded in culture and society, of which language is an integral part, legal language of necessity reflects the culture and society in which it is embedded. Rwanda’s three official languages mean that Gacaca law, articulated in Kinyarwanda, must now also find expression in the colonial languages with which it coexists, namely English and French. Though modern Gacaca law has come in for criticism, it has also been hailed as a model for indigenous responses to crimes of mass violence in Africa and other parts of the world. Mireille Djenno is the African Studies Librarian at Indiana University. She can be reached at mdjenno@indiana.edu.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

“There were black Germans?” My students are always surprised to learn that there were and are a community of African immigrants and Afro-Germans that dates back to the nineteenth century (and sometimes earlier), and that this community has at times had an influence on German culture, society, and racial thinking that belied its small size. Germany’s role in colonizing Africa has received increased attention lately, with an exhibit on German colonialism appearing at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in October and recent headway on a deal for Germany to pay reparations to the descendants of Herero and Nama genocide victims in Namibia. In Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Disapora Community, 1884-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken supply a part of the colonial story that gets even less attention than that of Germans in Africa: what about Africans in Germany? Focusing primarily on a community of West-African-born black Germans and their families, Rosenhaft and Aitken trace the groups evolution in the nineteenth century through its persecutions by the Nazi state and postwar existence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Medieval Egypt had a rapid influx of Sufis, which has previously been explained through reactionary models of analysis. It was argued that the widespread popularity of Sufism was marked by a public adoption of practices that satisfied the masses in ways the religious elite were not fully addressing. In The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325 (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), Nathan Hofer, Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri, critiques the social binary that these assumptions create, as well as, rethinks the mechanisms within the social production of Sufi culture. He explores these concerns in the context of the Ayyubid and Mamluk states and their relationships with Sufi masters and communities. First, a state-sponsored Sufi lodge serves as the site for professionalization of Sufis and the public consumption of Sufi culture that aligns with state objectives. The emergence of the Shādhilīya sufi order serves as a case of the textualization of an idealized sufi identity, and its subsequent popularization through the production of a collective community. Finally, Hofer explores the unique context of Upper-Egyptian Sufism, which relied on charismatic authority and miraculous work in the creation of a community. In our conversation we discussed the notion of Popular Culture in the medieval world, hagiography and biography, miracles, the khanqah of Cairo, state religious sponsorship, professional sufis, and contemporary methods for investigating the past. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen (McFarland, 2016) dwells on the intersections of memory, history, and cultural production in both Africa and the African diaspora. The figure of the zombie that entered the popular imagination with the publication of William Seabrook’s book The Magic Island (1929) during the American occupation of Haiti still holds cultural currency around the world. Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen calls for a rethinking of zombies in a sociopolitical context through the examination of several films, including White Zombie (1932), The Love Wanga (1935), I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). A 21st-century film from Haiti, Zombi candidat la presidence … ou les amours dun zombi, is also examined. A reading of Heading South (2005), a film about the female tourist industry in the Caribbean, explores zombification as a consumptive process driven by capitalism. Author Toni Pressley-Sanon holds a Ph.D. in African Languages and Literatures with a minor in Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds an M.A. in Liberal Studies and Anthropology from the New School for Social Research and a B.A. in Comparative Literature with a minor in African-American Studies from Hamilton College. She is an assistant professor at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. In addition to Zombifying a Nation: Race, Gender and the Haitian Loas on Screen, Pressley-Sanon has a forthcoming book titled Istwa across the Water: Haitian History, Memory, and the Cultural Imagination. The work reads the historical and contemporary relationship between Dahomey/Benin Republic, Kongo and Saint Domingue/Haiti dialectically; that is, as a “long conversation” that is facilitated by the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves. She argues that this relationship is anchored in memory and manifest through material culture on both sides of the Atlantic divide. James Stancil is an independent scholar, freelance journalist, and the President and CEO of Intellect U Well, Inc. a Houston-area non-profit dedicated to increasing the joy of reading and media literacy in young people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

When and where do African American religions begin? Sylvester Johnson, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Northwestern University, disrupts the traditional temporal and geographical boundaries in the academic study of black religion in the Americas in his new book, African American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Johnson places the productive forces in African American religion at the intersection of empire and colonialism and within the constructs of notions of democratic freedom. His study requires this analytical reformulation in order to examine how Black religious history unfolds within changing social and political contexts over the longue duree. In our conversation we discussed Afro-European commercialism, European views on Indigenous African religious practices, Black Christianization, violent state regulation, nineteenth century political theologies, Black settler colonialism and the creation of Liberia, Garveyism, African American Muslims, anticolonial movements, the racialization of religion, FBI surveillance and repression of Black religious movements, the connection between the history of African American Religions and Muslims Americans after 9/11, and interdisciplinarity. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In popular discourse today, few concepts are more sensationalized and maliciously caricatured than that of the Islamic State. In his fascinating new book For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State (Princeton University Press, 2016), Noah Salomon, Associate Professor of Religion at Carleton College, arrests the concept of the Islamic State away from its contemporary stereotypical life by offering a rich and dazzling account of state power and formation in the Sudan. Contesting recent arguments about the impossibility of an Islamic State, Salomon explores the social life of an attempted Islamic State in multiple and often unexpected locations of everyday life. What emerges from his brilliant and ferociously multilayered analysis is an account of the political irreducible to the structure of the nation-state, permeating varied discursive, institutional, and affective registers. In our conversation we talked about the idea of doing an ethnography of the state, colonial and NIF projects of civilizing religion in Sudan, fundamentalization of knowledge, affective citizenship, and hagiography as political critique. This sure to become a classic should be read by all. SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at stareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In Healthcare Policy In Africa: Institutions and Politics from Colonialism to the Present (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Jean-Germain Gros argues that healthcare policy should be the black box rather than the black hole of African Studies. By this he means that policy should be decoded so its secrets can be laid bare, rather than treated as an impenetrable mystery. To this end, in the book, as well as in the interview, Gros uses a variety of methodological approaches to explain/explicate the relative roles of agency and institutions in the history of healthcare policy in Africa. The book’s central thesis is that healthcare policy does not take place in a vacuum and it fills an important gap in the scholarship by examining the impact of factors including debt relief, conflict, humanitarianism, brain drain and globalization on policy affecting and affected by the health and wealth of Africans. Mireille Djenno is the African Studies Librarian at Indiana University. She can be reached at mdjenno@indiana.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Supermodel Georgie Badiel grew up in a small village in Burkina Faso where the closest source of water was many miles from home. After launching her successful modeling career, she began to speak out about the vital importance clean water can have on a community, drawing on her personal experience to educate others. Author Susan Verde and New York Times bestselling illustrator Peter H. Reynolds were inspired by Georgie’s story, and together all three have crafted a poignant picture book called, The Water Princess (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2016). Perfect for classroom teaching and for bedtime reading, The Water Princess illustrates one girl’s dream of helping her community, while educating readers on this important global issue. A percentage of the proceeds are being donated to the Ryan’s Well Foundation and to the Georgie Badiel Foundation. Susan Verde writes children’s books and teaches kid’s yoga and mindfulness. She is also the author of the picture books The Museum, and You and Me, I Am Yoga. Learn more at: http://www.susanverde.com. Susan Raab is president of Raab Associates, an internationally recognized agency that specializes in marketing literature, products and initiatives that help improve the lives of young people. Clients have included National Geographic, Scholastic, the International Board on Books for Young People, and bestselling authors and illustrators. Susan is marketing advisor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). She’s also a journalist reporting on publishing, education and human rights. Her work as a broadcast correspondent has been hosted by the University of Connecticut, and by the University of Floridas Recess Radio, a program syndicated to 500 public radio stations. Her many interviews, including with Art Spiegelman, Jon Scieszka, Norton Juster, Laurie Halse Anderson and many others talking about art and literature can be heard here. Follow Susan at: https://twitter.com/sraab18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2015), Carina E. Ray interrogates the intersections of race, marriage, gender and empire in this thought-provoking study that challenges the notion of identity and the politics that surround it. Ray plumbs the depth of an array of archival material, which includes travel narratives, visual sources, administrative records, wills, and personal and official correspondence. She also conducted interviews to further piece together the inner lives of Africans and Europeans to show how interracial marriages and relationships evolved in Ghana. In a very compelling way, Ray deconstructs intersexual economies to show their linkages to the slave trade and beyond. Her opening vignette not only sets the stage for the themes she addresses to illustrate how Africans had agency even when it came to marrying across the color line. Shortlisted for the United Kingdom’s Fage and Oliver Prize and the winner of the American Historical Associations’s Wesley-Logan Prize for African Diaspora History, this groundbreaking book has set new standards for understanding race, its implementation and its interpretation not only in Africa but also around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Harvard University Press, 2015), Ethan Katz examines and interrogates Jewish-Muslim relations from 1914 to the present. Arguing that interactions between Jews and Muslims must be understood in and through the respective, changing statuses and relationships of both communities to the French state, The Burdens of Brotherhood pursues the history of this “triangular affair.” Drawing on a range of archival, press and media sources, as well as oral interviews, the book emphasizes everyday lives and mutual perceptions in and between spaces private and public, local and transnational. Its chapters move from the diversity and legacies of wartime experiences, to family and community gathering places in three different French cities (Paris, Strasbourg, and Marseille), to the routes and mobilities of people, cultures, and politics across the Mediterranean. The Burdens of Brotherhood revisits the First World War, the interwar years, the period of Vichy and the Occupation, the French-Algerian War, and the final decades of the twentieth century. It also traces the impact of international movements and politics on ethno-religious communities and identities in the French context, from forms of Zionism and anti-imperialism to the vicissitudes of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948. Towards the end of our conversation, Ethan and I had a chance to speak about the recent French past, including the events of January 2015 that he addresses in the book’s conclusion. Written with the present in mind, The Burdens of Brotherhood offers vital historical perspective and insight on issues of urgent concern with important implications for the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies