Category Archives: African Studies

The University of Wisconsin Press celebrates Black History Month

The University of Wisconsin Press is proud to publish books and journals that engage with Black history, culture, and experiences. In celebration of Black History Month, the following titles will be offered at a discount all month long, with discount code BHM2024UWISC. We invite you to click on the hyperlinks below to browse our titles across genres, from narratives by enslaved Americans to works of anthropology, from history to poetry and fiction. You can also follow along on social media as we highlight some of the must-read books included here. 

How the End First Showed by D. M. Aderibigbe

Words of Witness: Black Women’s Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era by Angela A. Ards

Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic by Houston A. Baker Jr.

The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams

The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave by Henry Bibb, with a new introduction by Charles J. Heglar

The Blind African Slave: Or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace by Jeffrey Brace, as told to Benjamin F. Prentiss, Esq., edited and with an introduction by Kari J. Winter

Grace Engine by Joshua Burton

Kaiso! Writings by and about Katherine Dunham edited  by VèVè A. Clark and Sara E. Johnson

Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America by Frederick Cooper, Allen F. Isaacman, Florencia C. Mallon, William Roseberry, and Steve J. Stern

Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association by E. David Cronon, foreword by John Hope Franklin

The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census by Philip D. Curtin

Livin’ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet by Frank Marshall Davis, edited and with an introduction by John Edgar Tidwell

Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz

Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States by Carl Degler

Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print edited by Brigitte Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne

Living Black: Social Life in an African American Neighborhood by Mark S. Fleisher

Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives by Frances Smith Foster

Conjoined Twins in Black and White: The Lives of Millie-Christine McKoy and Daisy and Violet Hilton edited by Linda Frost

Transforming Ethnographic Knowledge edited by Rebecca Hardin and Kamari Maxine Clarke

Cubans in Angola: South-South Cooperation and Transfer of Knowledge, 1976–1991 by Christine Hatzky

Race in America: The Struggle for Equality edited by Herbert Hill and James E. Jones Jr.

Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work, and the Law by Herbert Hill

Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories by Jean M. Humez

Practical Audacity: Black Women and International Human Rights by Stanlie James

Understanding and Teaching American Slavery edited by Bethany Jay and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, foreword by Ira Berlin

Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement edited by Hasan Kwame Jeffries

Last Seen by Jacqueline Jones LaMon

Reading African American Autobiography: Twenty-First-Century Contexts and Criticism edited by Eric D. Lamore

Gender Nonconformity, Race, and Sexuality: Charting the Connections edited by Toni Lester

Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians by Bernth Lindfors

Equals in Learning and Piety: Muslim Women Scholars in Nigeria and North America by Beverly Mack

Whispers of Cruel Wrongs: The Correspondence of Louisa Jacobs and Her Circle, 1879–1911 edited by Mary Maillard

Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 by Joseph C. Miller

Meet Me Halfway by Jennifer Morales

Fagen: An African American Renegade in the Philippine-American War by Michael Morey

For Labor, Race, and Liberty: George Edwin Taylor, His Historic Run for the White House, and the Making of Independent Black Politics by Bruce L. Mouser

A Black Gambler’s World of Liquor, Vice, and Presidential Politics: William Thomas Scott of Illinois, 1839–1917 by Bruce L. Mouser

Òrìṣà Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture by Jacob K. Olupona and Terry Rey

All about Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color edited by Jina Ortiz and Rochelle Spencer

A Summer Up North: Henry Aaron and the Legend of Eau Claire Baseball by Jerry Poling

Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation by Sandra Pouchet Paquet

After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South by Hortense Powdermaker, with a new introduction by Brackette P. Williams and Drexel Woodson

Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison, Classicism, and African American Literature by Patrice D. Rankine

A Mysterious Life and Calling: From Slavery to Ministry in South Carolina by Reverend Mrs. Charlotte S. Riley, edited and with an introduction by Crystal J. Lucky, foreword by Joycelyn K. Moody

Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture, by Michaël Roy, translated by Susan Pickford

A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said by Omar Ibn Said, translated by Ala Alryyes

When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Cultures by Sheila Smith McKoy

Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South by Michael Tadman

Slavery and Race in American Popular Culture by William L. Van Deburg

Sister: An African American Life in Search of Justice by Sylvia Bell White and Jody LePage

American Sex TapeTM by Jameka Williams

UW Press announces new book series: Women and Gender in Africa

The University of Wisconsin Press is pleased to announce the launch of a new book series, Women and Gender in Africa, edited by Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué and Aili Mari Tripp. The series seeks to publish innovative book-length works, based on original research, primarily in the areas of history, politics, and cultural studies.

Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué, associate professor of African cultural studies and history at UW–Madison, says, “I am thrilled to highlight the works of innovative scholars who bring fresh perspectives on issues of gender and women in Africa. We are especially excited to focus on scholarship that transcends traditional scholarly frameworks by defying disciplinary boundaries and geographical constraints, exploring diverse methods, and spanning the vast expanse of the African continent.”

The series welcomes submissions that address questions and debates of broad theoretical, empirical, and methodological significance of interest to a wide readership, including manuscripts that demonstrate the comparative implications of women’s experiences across and beyond the African continent. The editors are especially interested in such topics as women and religion, sexuality, LGBTQI+ concerns, human rights, migration, health, the family, the environment, law, conflict resolution, race and ethnicity, women’s movements and feminism, and globalization. Projects addressing agency are particularly welcome, including authority, political and spiritual leadership, economic activity, and forms of knowledge and healing. The series welcomes manuscripts that incorporate discussions of literature and popular culture, representation and identity construction, and testimony and life writing.

For Aili Mari Tripp, Vilas Research Professor of Political Science at UW–Madison, the series is an opportunity “to give visibility to the growing body of first-rate research in Africa and beyond that focuses on women’s agency and challenges in a wide variety of social science and humanities fields.”

The series advisory board includes Ousseina Alidou (Rutgers University, USA), Nwando Achebe (Michigan State University, USA), Naminata Diabate (Cornell University, USA), Ainehi Edoro (University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA), Marc Epprecht (Queens University, Canada), Shireen Hassim (Carleton University, Canada), Dorothy Hodgson (Brandeis University, USA), Stanlie James (Arizona State University, USA), Alice Kang (University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA), Siphokazi Magadla (Rhodes University, South Africa), Fatima Sadiqi (Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Morocco), Laura Ann Twagira (Wesleyan University, USA), and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso (Brandeis University, USA).

Editor in chief Nathan MacBrien adds, “The University of Wisconsin Press has long had a commitment to publishing scholarship on Africa, and in particular writing on women’s lived experience in Africa. This new series provides inspiration for us, and the disciplines, to both broaden and deepen our commitments by giving space to imaginative work from new generations of scholars in Africa and across the world.”

Manuscripts will be selected based on significance of the topic, quality of scholarship, clarity and style of presentation, list balance, and marketability. For more information about submission, please contact Nathan MacBrien, editor in chief, at macbrien@wisc.edu. For other inquiries, please contact the series editors, Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué (jmougou@wisc.edu) and Aili Mari Tripp (atripp@wisc.edu).

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With more than 1,500 titles and 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world.

Call For Papers Ghana Studies – Special Issue Ghana’s Long 1970s: Reconsidering the Lost Decade (1966–1981)

There has been a surge of scholarly interest in the Ghana of the 1950s and 1960s, under its charismatic independence era leader Kwame Nkrumah. These works tell a new story of that era, focusing on the possibilities of independence by looking anew at Pan-Africanism, socialism, new histories of the Cold War and Black internationalism (Alhman 2017; Getachew 2019; Iandolo 2022; Osei-Opare 2023).


In contrast, Ghana’s 1970s are often reduced to an afterthought. Military coups dominate the narrative. Indeed, the 1970s are a decade characterized by military rule, economic decline, emigration, and hardship (Hutchful 1979; Pellow & Chazan 1986). This hardship is reflected in the relative lack of scholarship on the period. The body of work that does exist tends to reinforce a top-down narrative, with a strong focus on the state. It is only after 1981, when J.J. Rawlings comes to power and stays, that Ghana again attracts significant scholarly interest (Herbst 1993; Nugent 1995; Brydon & Legge 1996).


Forty years on, it is high time to return to the 1970s. Inspired by the interest in the Nkrumah years, and motivated by the availability of new archives in Ghana and elsewhere, we invite historians to reconsider the 1970s with us. Building on recent scholarship that begins to probe the 1970s anew (Hart 2016; Murillo 2017; Wiemers 2021), we seek contributions that engage with the following questions:
● How might our understanding of this decade change if instead of focusing on disjuncture, we looked for continuity?
● How did this period of transition between two defining political regimes (between Nkrumah and Rawlings) shape contemporary Ghana?
● How did ordinary Ghanaians navigate this tumultuous decade? What does a focus on everyday lives, rather than a state-centric approach, reveal about these years?
● What new methods and sources might we turn to, to recover histories of a decade when state institutions supposedly collapsed?
● To what extent can the framing of “Ghana’s long 1970s” (1966–1981) help us reconsider the history of postcolonial Ghana?

We are particularly interested in contributions that de-center political narratives, but are open to a wide array of approaches. We welcome expressions of interest and further conversations regarding potential submissions (write to: claire.nicolas@unil.ch).

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts (200 words) should be submitted to Claire Nicolas (claire.nicolas@unil.ch) and Elisa Prosperetti (elisa.prosperetti@nie.edu.sg) by 1 April 2023.

Contributors will be notified by 15 April 2023.

Full papers (8000 words) are to be received by 15 September 2023.

All articles will undergo peer review. Those accepted for publication will appear in a special issue of Ghana Studies, scheduled for publication in 2024.

About Ghana Studies
Ghana Studies is the peer-reviewed journal of the Ghana Studies Association, an international affiliate of the African Studies Association (U.S). Its current editors are Victoria Ellen Smith (University of Bristol) and Nana Yaw Boampong Sapong (University of Ghana). Since its first issue in 1998, the journal has published significant work by leading scholars based in Ghana, the United States, Canada, and Europe. It is published annually by the University of Wisconsin Press.

About the editors of the special issue
Claire Nicolas is a Research Fellow from the Swiss National Science Foundation, at SOAS (University of London). She specializes in the history of sport, citizenship, and gender.
Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She specializes in the history of education, development, and nation-building.

Bibliography
J. Alhman, Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017).
L. Brydon and K. Legge, Adjusting Society: The World Bank, the IMF, and Ghana (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996).
A. Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
J. Hart, “‘NIFA NIFA’: Technopolitics, Mobile Workers, and the Ambivalence of Decline in Acheampong’s Ghana,” African Economic History, 44 (2016): 181–201.
J. Herbst, The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982-1991 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
E. Hutchful, “A Tale of Two Regimes: Imperialism, the Military and Class in Ghana,” Review of African Political Economy 14 (1979): 36–55.
A. Iandolo, Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955–1968 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022).
B. Murillo, Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017).
P. Nugent, Big Men, Small Boys, and Politics in Ghana: Power, Ideology, and the Burden of History, 1982-1994 (London: Pinter, 1995).
N. Osei-Opare, “Ghana and Nkrumah Revisited: Lenin, State Capitalism, and Black Marxist Orbits,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (2023): 1-23.
D. Pellow and N. Chazan, Ghana: Coping with Uncertainty (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986).
A. Wiemers, Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021).

Biography and Economics in African History

The most recent issue of African Economic History, a special issue entitled “Biography and Economics,” is now available. The lead editor for this issue, Paul Lovejoy, explains his choice of theme:

The inspiration for this special issue on Biography and Economics was the realization that economic history often does not focus on individuals and what their personal testimonies can tell us about economics and economic relationships. The issue brings together five articles that address this theme in different ways; the first through the lens of Philip Quaque on the Gold Coast in the eighteenth century; the second the case of the Ologoudou family on the coast of the Bight of Benin; third through biographical perspectives on enslavement in the upper Guinea coast; fourth, through the memories of indentured women in Natal; and lastly through the autobiographical details found in the wills of freed Africans in Brazil.

This was the final issue for Lovejoy, who is now retired after more than 30 years of editing African Economic History. Browse the table of contents on Project MUSE.

African Economic History Welcomes New Editors

Following the retirement of longtime editor Paul E. Lovejoy, African Economic History has appointed two new editors. Earlier this year, George Bob-Milliar and Chétima Melchisedek joined the existing editorial team of Mariana Candido, Toyin Falola, and Toby Green. Together, the editors recently launched a social media presence for African Economic History, posting about current events related to African economies as well as important research in the field. You can follow AEH on Facebook and Twitter. Read on to learn more about the journal’s new editors.

George M. Bob-Milliar is a senior lecturer in the Department of History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, one of the most prestigious public universities in Ghana. He joined the faculty of KNUST in August 2013 and has been involved in research, teaching, and mentoring of students at all levels. He is currently serving as the director of KNUST’s Centre for Cultural and African Studies (CeCASt). In 2012, Bob-Milliar received his PhD from the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, the oldest center for African Studies on the continent. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, his research lies at the intersection of history, political ethnography, and development studies. He has published in the preeminent journals in his field of specialization. Bob-Milliar has been a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge, Uganda’s Makerere University, and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), as well as a guest lecturer at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. In 2010, he received the inaugural African Author Prize for the best article published in African Affairs by an author based at an African institution, and in 2012 he was awarded a prize for his contribution to research on African policy issues from the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He sits on the editorial boards of African Affairs, African Review of Economics & Finance, and the Journal of Political Economy and Development.

Chétima Melchisedek is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at York University. Before coming to York, Melchisedek was a senior lecturer at the University of Maroua; a fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies; the Gordon Henderson Fellow at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, University of Ottawa; and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African Studies at the University of Basel. He earned a PhD in history from the Université Laval and a master’s degree from the University of Ngaoundéré in Cameroon. Melchisedek is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Canadian Journal of African Studies. His articles have appeared in the Historical Journal, African Studies Review, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, and Afrique Contemporaine, among others. His article in Cahiers d’Études Africaines (2015) was awarded the Prize for the Best Paper on Central Africa by the Central Africa Studies Association, while his paper in Africa Spectrum (2018) won the UFS/AS Young African Scholar Award. Melchisedek guest edited a special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies on “Boko Haram beyond the Media” (Volume 54 Number 2, 2020) and is currently co-editing, with Paul Lovejoy, a volume on Boko Haram and Political Distancing (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2021). Chétima is an affiliate member of the African Academy of Sciences and a founding member of the Cameroon Academy for Young Scientists.

Ghana Studies Welcomes New Editors

Ghana Studies journal is proud to welcome two new editors, Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai and Jeffrey Ahlman. Abdulai and Ahlman take over for outgoing editors Carina Ray and Kofi Baku. The UW Press would like to thank Ray and Baku for all their hard work on behalf of the journal over the course of their three-year term. The following is a brief introduction to the new editors.

Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK), and a PhD in Development Policy and Management from the University of Manchester, UK. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His research centers on the intersection between politics and development, with particular focus on public sector reforms, natural resource governance, spatial inequalities, social policy and social protection, and democratization. He is the co-author of Governing Extractive Industries: Politics, Histories, Ideas (Oxford University Press, 2018). His published work has also appeared in African Affairs, Politics & Policy, New Political Economy, Democratization, Development Policy Review, European Journal of Development Research, Journal of International Development, and Labour, Capital & Society. He won the prestigious Gerti Hesseling Prize (2017), awarded for the best journal article by an African scholar, and was also recipient of a runner-up position for African Affairs’ African Author Prize for best paper published in 2016/2017. In his new role as co-editor of Ghana Studies, he looks forward to deepening the visibility and multidisciplinary outlook of the Journal.

Jeffrey Ahlman is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the African Studies Program at Smith College, where he specializes in African political, social, and intellectual history. His research reflects on issues of decolonization, political and social sovereignty, citizenship, and the Cold War in mid-twentieth-century Africa. His book, Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana, was published by Ohio University Press in 2017. He is currently completing two books. The first is a biography of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, which is under contract with Ohio University Press. The second—under contract with I.B. Tauris—is a history of Ghana since approximately the mid-nineteenth century. His other published work has appeared in the Journal of African History, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, Africa Today, Ghana Studies, and Kronos: Southern African Histories. He looks forward to his new role as co-editor of Ghana Studies, where he strives to further promote the journal as the premier site for the interdisciplinary study of Ghana.

Call for Papers

The editors welcome submissions of original research about Ghana for potential publication in Ghana Studies. Submissions from all disciplines will be considered. Manuscripts of interest could explore, but are not limited to, topics such as:

  • Ghana’s 2020 elections
  • Ghana’s recent financial crisis
  • The political economy of oil in Ghana
  • Questions of inequality
  • Challenges of structural transformation
  • Ghanaian-Diasporic Relations

For full guidelines, please visit http://bit.ly/gssubmissions.

Luso-Brazilian Review Is Now Free to Read on Project MUSE

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, volumes 41–56 (2004–present) of Luso-Brazilian Review are now freely available until May 31, 2020, on Project MUSE. In opening content, the journal joins a wider initiative led by Project MUSE to provide free access to many books and journals, in order to support scholars as they transition to remote teaching and learning. You can find a complete list of free resources on MUSE here.

Luso-Brazilian Review

Luso-Brazilian Review publishes interdisciplinary scholarship on Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone African cultures, with special emphasis on scholarly works in literature, history, and the social sciences. Each issue of the Luso-Brazilian Review includes articles and book reviews, which may be written in either English or Portuguese.

Journal Editor Receives Book Prize from the British Academy

Toby Green, Senior Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture at King’s College London and a co-editor of the UW Press journal African Economic History, was recently awarded the British Academy’s 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for his book A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2019). The Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize honors a non-fiction book that promotes global cultural understanding.

A Fistful of Shells describes the relationship between West Africa and European colonial powers as it evolved through the growth of the slave trade. Prior to the fifteenth century, gold-rich African kingdoms and European economies had been on equal terms, but Green shows through six case studies how European merchants created an imbalance by importing large quantities of objects used as currency in African kingdoms, such as cowrie shells and copper rings, to exchange for gold and slave laborers. This influx of currency created inflation and lead to economic instability and social upheaval in West African societies. The book then traces political developments that led to a revolutionary nineteenth century in Africa.

In an interview on the British Academy’s blog, Green emphasizes the importance of fieldwork to his project and for anyone studying the history of West Africa. “The problem with using just written materials . . . is that in the end you will reproduce the perspectives of the authors. In this case, they were white male slave traders and that’s going to give you a very lopsided view – which is what traditionally has happened.” To avoid this pitfall, Green’s research supplemented written narratives with archival research, oral histories, art, archaeology, and letters. The book is the culmination of over twenty years of research.

To learn more about West African economic history, read an excerpt from the book, and browse the latest African Economic History, a special issue entitled “Colonial Economic History in West Africa” co-edited by Green and George M. Bob-Milliar.

Thirty Years of Editing African Economic History

By Mariana Candido, Toyin Falola, and Toby Green, co-editors, African Economic History

African Economic History

African Economic History salutes Professor Paul E. Lovejoy for the thirty-plus years of service he has given to the journal. In that time, Paul has performed wondrous feats in maintaining the vitality of a discipline which is fundamentally relevant to so many areas of African Studies, but which had been allowed to wither on the academic vine. The continued existence of the journal is a standing example of Professor Lovejoy’s outstanding service to the discipline of economic history and the field of African history in general. We will miss his contributions and editorial oversight so very much, but are also so grateful for all that he has done.

With Paul Lovejoy’s retirement as an editor, we are delighted to announce the appointment of two new editors: George Bob-Milliar, of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and Melchisedek Chétima, Banting Fellow at York University.

The journal is also pleased to announce that we are now accepting submissions in Portuguese. This opens the journal to a wider range of potential contributors in Africa and Brazil,  from which we are very keen to see more submissions. We are pleased to join African Studies Review and the Journal of West African History in taking this step. If you are interested in having your work considered for publication in African Economic History, please see our submission guidelines.

Colonial Economic History in West Africa

African Economic History

A special issue of African Economic History, “Colonial Economic History in West Africa: The Gold Coast and Gambia in Comparative Perspective,” reconsiders the comparative place of economic frameworks in British colonies in West Africa. One of the issue’s important aims is to emphasize the difference in divergent spaces, between the “profitable” colony of the Gold Coast and the “economic drain” of The Gambia colony. Edited by George M. Bob-Milliar and Toby Green, the issue is also characterized by new and distinctive archival research from archives in the countries considered; this empirical detail places the economic impact of colonialism in an important new light.

Browse the table of contents and read the editors’ introduction, freely available on Project MUSE.