New African Histories

Innovative. Imaginative. Provocative. Original. Methodologically rigorous.

Since its founding in 2004, New African Histories has redefined the field of African history. Books in this series bring the practice of history to unlikely places, ask unsettling questions, and adopt unorthodox methodologies. We welcome history written “from below,” but we also encourage work from other angles: histories of therapies; forms and aesthetics; political traditions; and technologies that are less frequently the subject of historical analysis.

In this series, environmental and urban histories live side by side with histories of slavery, migration, and labor. World, comparative, diaspora, and border histories sit next to media and art histories. Economic and modernization histories are published alongside histories of gender and sexuality; race and ethnicity; nationality and citizenship; and generation and class. Capacious in their analytical and thematic scope, books in the New African Histories series reach across the very categories that define them.

In recent years the series has expanded its remit to include groundbreaking work on aesthetics, visual culture, and art history. Published in a larger format and generously illustrated, these books allow readers to see history in new ways. As we continue to reflect the dynamism of our field, we also aim to push it in new directions by publishing works that challenge the conventions that continue to shape the field. Imperative to this mission is our commitment to publishing the cutting-edge work of historians based at African institutions; manuscripts by first-time authors; and the work of established scholars who are breaking new ground. Ohio University Press is proud of its relationships with a number of African presses that co-publish affordable editions of many of its African Studies titles.

Editor(s)

Jean Allman, Series Editor
Professor of African and African American Studies
Washington University in St. Louis

Jacob S. T. Dlamini, Series Editor
Associate Professor of History
Princeton University

Allen Isaacman, Series Editor
Professor of History
University of Minnesota

Derek R. Peterson, Series Editor
Professor of History and African Studies
University of Michigan

Carina Ray, Series Editor
Associate Professor, African and African American Studies
Brandeis University

Forthcoming

Imagine Lagos
Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City
By Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi

Combining archival research with a digital humanities–focused examination of cartography, Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi reveals the gendered, spatial, and environmental responses to historical, political, and social change in mid-nineteenth-century Lagos, Nigeria.

A Country of Defiance
Mapping the Casamance in Senegal
By Mark W. Deets

This analysis of culture and nationalism in the Casamance—home of the longest-running conflict on the African continent—considers colonialism, cartography, agriculture, religion, forests, education, and sports history to explain and analyze the complex identities that have driven the separatist movement as well as the Senegalese nation.

Social History · Human Geography · Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social · Senegal · African Studies

Unruly Ideas
A History of Kitawala in Congo
By Nicole Eggers

In this conceptual history, Nicole Eggers argues that practitioners of the Congolese religious movement Kitawala can be understood as intellectuals, innovators, and vital participants in the construction and use of power. Eggers also explores the relationship between healing and violence in their frequently gendered central African manifestations.

Available

Apartheid’s Leviathan
Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence
By Faeeza Ballim

Beginning in the 1960s, the security of electricity supply has shaped South Africa’s economic growth and prosperity, and electricity shortages have negatively inflected the rise of its postapartheid democracy. Construction delays and escalating costs have thwarted the nation’s mining, manufacturing, and power generation.

Apartheid’s Leviathan
Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence
By Faeeza Ballim

Convening Black Intimacy
Christianity, Gender, and Tradition in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa
By Natasha Erlank

This social history of twentieth-century Black intimacy and family life in South Africa is the first book to demonstrate the singular role of Christianity in reshaping sexual and marital traditions. It is a must-read for scholars interested in the politics of gender, sexuality, and family in South Africa, as well as for historians of Christianity.

A Language for the World
The Standardization of Swahili
By Morgan J. Robinson

Based on extensive archival research, this intellectual history of Standard Swahili—a dialect of the Swahili language written in the Latin alphabet—argues that attention to the intertwined processes of codification from 1864 to 1964 lends new perspectives on history, colonialism, time, and cultural representation in East Africa and beyond.

Foreign Language Study | Swahili · Social History · Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social · Eastern Africa · African Studies · Swahili

Africanizing Oncology
Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda
By Marissa Mika

Combining methods from African studies, science and technology studies, and medical anthropology, Marissa Mika considers the Uganda Cancer Institute as a microcosm of the Ugandan state and as a lens through which to trace the political, technological, moral, and intellectual aspirations and actions of health care providers and patients.

To Speak and Be Heard
Seeking Good Government in Uganda, ca. 1500–2015
By Holly Elisabeth Hanson

Through detailed archival research, Hanson reveals the origins of Uganda’s strategies for good government—assembly, assent, and powerful gifts—and explains why East African party politics often fail.

Political Science, Africa · History | Africa | East · Colonialism and Decolonization · Uganda · Eastern Africa · African Studies

Carceral Afterlives
Prisons, Detention, and Punishment in Postcolonial Uganda
By Katherine Bruce-Lockhart

This social and political history analyzes how incarceration, a practice and policy with colonial origins, was central to both the exertion of and challenges to state power in postcolonial Uganda. The book also illustrates the persistent imbrication of prisons, punishment, politics, and struggles for decolonization and freedom across the globe.

History | Africa | East · Social Science | Penology · Colonialism and Decolonization · Uganda · African Studies

Spear
Mandela and the Revolutionaries
By Paul S. Landau

Spanning the years just before (and just after) Nelson Mandela’s 1962 arrest, this entirely fresh history of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), or Spear of the Nation, and its revolutionary milieu brings to life the period in which Mandela and his comrades fought South Africa’s apartheid regime not only with words and protests, but also with bombs and fire.

History | Revolutionary · Political Science, Africa · History | Africa | South | Republic of South Africa · Violence in Society · South Africa · African Studies

Spear
Mandela and the Revolutionaries
By Paul S. Landau

History | Revolutionary · Political Science, Africa · History | Africa | South | Republic of South Africa · Violence in Society · South Africa · African Studies

Cover of 'Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa'

Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa
The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria
By Saheed Aderinto

From debates over the aesthetics of birds in the urban landscape to how horse racing enhanced imperial power to the ways in which water navigation impacted aquatic creatures, Saheed Aderinto argues that it is impossible to comprehend the full extent of imperial domination without considering the colonial subjecthood of animals.

The Great Upheaval
Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria
By Judith A. Byfield

In this finely textured social and intellectual history of gender and nation making, Byfield captures the dynamism of women’s political engagement in postwar Nigeria. She illuminates the centrality of gender to the study of nationalism, offering new lines of inquiry into the late colonial era and its consequences for the future Nigerian state.

History | Africa | West · Women’s Studies · Colonialism and Decolonization · Social History · Nigeria · African Studies

Embodied Engineering
Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali
By Laura Ann Twagira

Common narratives about development in Africa miss the critical technological work of women. Twagira’s study instead positions Malian women as rural engineers whose strategic planning and labor over the course of the twentieth century assured their food security.

The Muridiyya on the Move
Islam, Migration, and Place Making
By Cheikh Anta Babou

Representations of diasporic Murid disciples often depict them as passive recipients of change wrought by powerful clerics left behind in Senegal. In this study, Cheikh Anta Babou examines the construction of their transnational collective identity and its influence on cultural practices, identities, and aspirations.

Emigration and Immigration · History | Africa | West · Sufism · Senegal · Cote d'Ivoire · Gabon · France · United States · African Studies

Village Work
Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana
By Alice Wiemers

This detailed and groundbreaking history of rural Ghanaian statecraft details the crucial importance that local village development systems have on regional and national scales.

Business & Economics | Development Studies · History | Africa | West · Developing & Emerging Countries · Colonialism and Decolonization · Ghana · Western Africa · African Studies

Embodied Engineering
Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali
By Laura Ann Twagira