Africa Past & Present » Afripod

Lauren Jarvis (History, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) on her new book, A Prophet of the People: Isaiah Shembe and the Making of a South African Church (Michigan State University Press, 2024). Dr. Jarvis discusses the remarkable life of Shembe, the building of a religious community of people left behind by industrial capitalism, strategies of evasion, and the key role of women in the church. She then reflects on written, oral, and visual sources, white authorities’ anxieties about the Nazaretha church, and what happened to the community after Shembe’s death in 1935.

Michelle Sikes (Kinesiology, African Studies, and History, Penn State University) on her new book, Kenya’s Running Women: A History (Michigan State University Press, 2023). The conversation begins with Sikes's journey from NCAA champion and professional runner to Rhodes scholar and academic. She then delves into the book's main arguments and sources and methods. Sikes elaborates on women athletes' biographical narratives and transformational changes in global athletics since the 1990s. The interview closes with a discussion of gender-based violence, what makes Kenyan runners great, and the impact of sports on the broader quest for Black freedom, equality, and justice.

Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi (History, University of the Free State) on his new book, Cultural Resistance on Robben Island: Songs of Struggle and Liberation in South Africa (Skotaville 2024). After discussing the genesis of his scholarly interests, Dr. Ramoupi describes prisoners’ music— instruments, genres, styles—and its impact on surviving apartheid’s harshest prison. He then reflects on the relationship between prisoners and guards, and changes in Robben Island prison culture over time. The interview closes with Ramoupi’s reflections on the film, Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, and a preview of his new Mellon Foundation-funded research project.

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 Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1931–2002. The interview features a musical interlude (courtesy of Paulo Flores). It closes with insights on Moorman’s public-facing work with Africa Is A Country and provides a sneak peak into her current book project.

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 Louisiana devised ways to gain control over parts of their lives and defined freedom for themselves in the age of slavery and the slave trade. The interview closes with Dr. Johnson’s thoughts on LifexCode: Digital Humanities Against Enclosure, which she directs, and on the critical role of ethical collaborative scholarship in academic endeavors.

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 work advancing African scholarship through research publications and through Sports Africa, a coordinate organization of the U.S. African Studies Association that he co-founded in 2004.

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 in the field of African studies. The interview concludes with Chachage’s insights on the controversial recent elections in Tanzania.

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 Africa. The interview closes with a discussion of musician Salif Keita’s journey from social outcast (as an albino) in Mande society to icon of world music.

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 Ufahamu Africa podcast and co-editing the Monkey Cage politics blog at the Washington Post.

Follow her on Twitter at @dadakim.