AFROFILES

About AFROFILES

A podcast featuring conversations and stories by students of African Studies. We center Africa and embrace the pluralism of perspectives, approaches, and projects within African Studies. Join us as we dig into the big, important questions, the unrivaled history, and the leading thinkers of Africa.

Publisher

Afrofiles

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Feb 2021

Latest episode

27 May 2022

Latest episodes

21 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 May 2022

   Are Coups Contagious?

   Thanks for listening to Afrofiles! In this episode, Dr. Miles Tendi, professor of Politics and African Studies at Oxford University, talks with Luke St. Pierre and Sarah Daly about recent coups in north and west Africa. Find Miles on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MilesTendi (https://twitter.com/MilesTendi) and check out his most recent book, The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe: Solomon Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker (2020) See references discussed in the interview: · Ruth First, Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’État(1970) https://www.ruthfirstpapers.org.uk/term/cluster/barrel-gun (https://www.ruthfirstpapers.org.uk/term/cluster/barrel-gun) · The famous picture of Condé on his couch during the coup, when he was detained in his office: https://news365.co.ke/2021/09/06/president-conde/ (https://news365.co.ke/2021/09/06/president-conde/) · Kevin Koehler and Holger Albrecht, “Revolutions and the Military: Endgame Coups, Instability, and Prospects for Democracy,” Armed Forces and Society (November 4, 2019). · Holger Albrecht, Kevin Koehler, and Austin Shutz, “Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy,” International Studies Quarterly 65, no. 4 (December 2021). · Samuel Decalo, Coups & Army Rule in Africa, 1990, https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Samuel-Decalo/Coups-and-Army-Rule-in-Africa--Motivations-and-Constraints-Second-Edition/12827694 (https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Samuel-Decalo/Coups-and-Army-Rule-in-Africa--Motivations-and-Constraints-Second-Edition/12827694) · Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (2013); and Foreign Intervention in Africa After the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror (2018); https://www.loyola.edu/academics/history/faculty/schmidt (https://www.loyola.edu/academics/history/faculty/schmidt) · Boubacar N’Diaye, various publications, https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Boubacar-NDiaye-2002747900 (https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Boubacar-NDiaye-2002747900) · Larry Diamond, “Democratic Regression in Comparative Perspective: Scope, Methods, and Causes,” Democratization 28, no. 1 (2021), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2020.1807517 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2020.1807517) This episode was produced by Luke St. Pierre and Sarah Daly, with help from Ed Hendrickson. This episode was edited by Sarah, which explains any and all listening woes.

2. 

   10 May 2022

   Transportation Infrastructure in Ghana

   On today’s episode, we discuss transportation infrastructure in Ghana. Who goes where, when, and how in Accra is political, informed by urban geography, colonial history, culture, and technology. What ideas of progress and nation are embedded in roads, and how do ordinary citizens navigate the political economy of transportation infrastructure? To find out more, Enoch Osei Koduah sat down with Jennifer Hart, associate professor of African history at Wayne State University. Her research challenges modernist visions of technology and infrastructure in Ghanaian history, emphasizing instead, how Africans imagined alternative futures for themselves, and appropriated technologies for indigenous use. Her 2016 book, Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation, details the development of Ghana’s cultures of automobility, throughout the 20th century. Her current work on DIY urbanism in Africa attends to vernacular uses of infrastructure, in order to explore decolonial models for urban planning.

3. 

   27 Mar 2022

   Africa-India Connections

   On this week's episode, AFROFILES sits down with Dr. Shobana Shankar, professor of African History at Stony Brook University and author of the An Uneasy Embrace: Africa, India and the Spectre of Race (https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/an-uneasy-embrace/). For generations, Africans and South Asians have sustained networks of trade, migration, politics, intellectual exchange, cultural production, and religious thinking. Afro-Asian connections have been, at times, the source of generative cross-pollination and solidarity, but the relationship has also been tense, ambivalent, and multiple. Centering the discussion on South Asia’s influence in West Africa, Dr. Shankar details the entangled histories of missionaries and converts, scientists and academics, linguists, filmmakers, and Pan African politicians.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.