Best Cassava Republic Press Podcasts (2025)

1
Jonas Elbousty and Roger Allen, "Reading Mohamed Choukri's Narratives: Hunger in Eden" (Routledge, 2024) 1:05:00

4d ago1:05:00

1:05:00

Reading Mohamed Choukri’s Narratives: Hunger in Eden (Routledge, 2024) presents an intricate exploration into the life and literary universe of Mohamed Choukri, a towering figure in 20th-century Moroccan literature. Known primarily for his groundbreaking autobiographical work “al-Khubz al-Ḥāfī” (For Bread Alone), Choukri’s literary influence extend…

1
Jody Benjamin, "The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700-1850" (Ohio UP, 2024) 1:17:14

17d ago1:17:14

1:17:14

The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700 – 1850 (Ohio UP, 2024) examines historical change across a broad region of western Africa—from Saint Louis, Senegal, to Freetown, Sierra Leone—through the development of textile commerce, consumption, and dress. Indigo-dyed and printed cotton, wool, linen, and silk c…

1
William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation" (Liverpool UP, 2023) 49:02

24d ago49:02

49:02

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and author of Dibia's World.: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation (Liverpool UP, 2023). William discusses the importance of names, voice and the community life of a hundred …

1
Lara Montesinos Coleman, "Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights" (Duke UP, 2023) 1:13:10

25d ago1:13:10

1:13:10

In Struggles for the Human: Violent Legality and the Politics of Rights (Duke University Press 2024), Lara Montesinos Coleman blends ethnography, political philosophy, and critical theory to reorient debates on human rights through attention to understandings of legality, ethics, and humanity in anticapitalist and decolonial struggle. Drawing on he…

1
Mark Fallon, "Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture" (Regan Arts, 2017) 52:07

26d ago52:07

52:07

From busting drug lords to leading the Pentagon task force charged with bringing the 9/11 terrorists to justice, Mark Fallon has spent his career on the front lines of U.S. national security. My first guest is one of the most fascinating people I've interviewed. Former NCIS Special Agent in Charge Mark Fallon is a national security consultant, scho…

1
Maïa Pal, "Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital" (Cambridge UP, 2020) 45:25

28d ago45:25

45:25

With rigorous attention to history and empire, Maïa Pal's Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital (Cambridge UP, 2020) is a unique analysis of imperial expansion. Through an analysis of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean—and attention to Castilian, French, Dutch, and British empires—Pal's multifac…

1
Yolanda Aixelà-Cabré, "Spain’s African Colonial Legacies: Morocco and Equatorial Guinea Compared" (Brill, 2022) 1:01:07

30d ago1:01:07

1:01:07

The African cities of Bata and Al-Hoceima were created during the Spanish colonial rule of Equatorial Guinea and Morocco. Spain’s African Colonial Legacies: Morocco and Equatorial Guinea Compared (Brill, 2022) constructs their local history to analyse how Spanish colonialism worked, what its legacies were and the imprints it left on their national …

1
Aaron Robertson, "The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America" (FSG, 2024) 54:58

1M ago54:58

54:58

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Said…

1
Lorna Gibb, "Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages" (Princeton UP, 2025) 39:47

1M ago39:47

39:47

An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the w…

1
Jeff Sebo, "The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why" (Norton, 2025) 1:04:40

1M ago1:04:40

1:04:40

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes, often unnecessarily. We also plan to use animals, AI systems…

1
Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024) 54:38

1M ago54:38

54:38

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary open-access study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of…

1
Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024) 54:38

1M ago54:38

54:38

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. This capacious, interdisciplinary open-access study reformulates Europe's so-called "migrant crisis" from a sudden disaster to a site of…

1
Las G. Newman, "To Die in Africa’s Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century" (Langham, 2024) 1:32:52

1M ago1:32:52

1:32:52

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our u…

1
Bianca Murillo, "Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2017) 1:14:48

1M ago1:14:48

1:14:48

In Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Ohio UP, 2017), Bianca Murillo explores the shifting social terrains that made the buying and selling of goods in modern Ghana possible. Fusing economic and business history with social and cultural history, she traces the evolution of consumerism in the colonial Gold Coast and ind…

1
Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025) 33:16

1M ago33:16

33:16

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and democratic processes. In his book, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025), Daniel Solove provides a compelling exploration of the intersection between evolving technologies and privacy rights. Draw…

1
Chitra Nagarajan, "The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict" (Cassava Republic, 2025) 1:17:40

2M ago1:17:40

1:17:40

The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict (Cassava Republic Press, 2025) is a moving, often provocative, and ultimately vital collection of first hand accounts of people living through the Boko Haram conflict. From abducted girls to brash soldiers, and from community leaders to simple fishermen, this collection provides an ins…

1
Chitra Nagarajan, "The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict" (Cassava Republic, 2025) 1:17:40

2M ago1:17:40

1:17:40

The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict (Cassava Republic Press, 2025) is a moving, often provocative, and ultimately vital collection of first hand accounts of people living through the Boko Haram conflict. From abducted girls to brash soldiers, and from community leaders to simple fishermen, this collection provides an ins…

1
Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024) 58:36

2M ago58:36

58:36

In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign national citizens. Run and organized like a supply chain, this system dehumanises those who are detained and deported, treating them as if they were packages to be moved from place to place and relying on poor…

1
Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:05:34

2M ago1:05:34

1:05:34

In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial capitalism in the twenty-first century. Through fieldwork in one of the “China malls” that has emerged along Johannesburg’s former mining belt, Huang identifies everyday relations of power and differen…

1
Les Sosnowski and Monique Sosnowski, "Operation Crevette: Benin, Mercenaries, and the Survival of a New State" (Lexington Books, 2024) 1:49:04

2M ago1:49:04

1:49:04

Freshly out from under French colonial rule in 1960, the West African nation of Dahomey (now Benin) became home to the largest number of coups d’état in history, earning the reputation of the “sick child of Africa.” Country politics eventually aligned with Marxist and socialist ideologies stimulating French opposition that resulted in mercenary int…

1
Studying Myanmar in Times of Crises 27:56

2M ago27:56

27:56

How do we to study Myanmar when access to the country is so difficulty? In this episode, Kristina Kironska and Monika Verma from the Myanmar Studies Center at Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech Republic share their insights. Kristina Kironska is a socially engaged interdisciplinary academic with experience in election observation, research, an…

1
Forest Issac Jones, "Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972" (First Hill Books, 2025) 26:59

2M ago26:59

26:59

Forest Isaac Jones is an award-winning author of non-fiction and essays, specializing in the study of Irish History, the US Civil Rights Movement and Northern Ireland. His latest essay, ‘The Civil Rights Connection Between The USA and Northern Ireland’ was awarded honorable mention in the category of nonfiction essay by Writer’s Digest in their 93r…

1
Katherine Hallemeier, "African Literature and US Empire: Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing" (Edinburgh UP, 2024) 41:51

2M ago41:51

41:51

African Literature and US Empire Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing (Edinburgh UP, 2024) demonstrates how African literature grapples with the enforced optimism of US empire that circulates in postcolonial nations: Unsettles chronologies that chart a growing disillusionment with the postcolonial nation and national developm…

1
Benjamin P. Davis, "Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics" (Edinburgh UP, 2023) 57:26

2M ago57:26

57:26

Benjamin P. Davis’s Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Edinburgh University Press 2025) provides one of the first readings, in English or French, of Édouard Glissant as an ethical theorist. What do we in the West owe those who grow our food, sew our clothes and produce our electronics? And what have we always…

1
Human Rights in the Trump Era: A Conversation with Kenneth Roth 32:47

2M ago32:47

32:47

In this episode of International Horizons, Kenneth Roth, former longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, joins RBI director John Torpey to discuss Roth’s recent book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abuse of Governments (Knopf, 2025), which reflects on strategies for defending civil, political, economic, and soc…

1
Matt Mahmoudi, "Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control" (U California Press, 2025) 57:44

2M ago57:44

57:44

As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance industries. And when US Immigration Customs Enforcement aggressively reinforced its program of raids, detention, and family separation, it was powered by Silicon Valley corporations. In cities of refuge, w…

1
Ahmed M. Abozaid, "Counterterrorism Strategies in Egypt: Permanent Exceptions in the War on Terror" (Routledge, 2021) 1:06:16

2M ago1:06:16

1:06:16

Ahmed M. Abozaid’s Counterterrorism Strategies in Egypt: Permanent Exceptions in the War on Terror (Routledge, 2021) reveals how counterterrorism discourses and practices became the main tool of a systematic violation of human rights in Egypt after the Arab Uprising. It examines how the civic and democratic uprising in Egypt turned into robust auth…

1
David Hollenbach, "Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition" (Georgetown UP, 2024) 1:07:56

2M ago1:07:56

1:07:56

In his most recent book, Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (Georgetown UP, 2024), Jesuit scholar and Georgetown professor, Fr David Hollenbach explains the Judeo-Christian roots of our concept of human rights and the contributions of secular institutions like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights …

1
Andrew Clapham, "War" (Oxford UP, 2021) 1:03:06

2M ago1:03:06

1:03:06

This book poses the question: How relevant is the concept of war today? Professor Andrew Clapham of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva examines how notions about war continue to influence how we conceive rights and obligations in national and international law. It considers the role international law plays in …

1
Tycho van der Hoog, "Comrades Beyond the Cold War: North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa" (Hurst, 2025) 43:30

3M ago43:30

43:30

North Korea was an important player in the decolonisation of Africa. Freedom fighters across the continent received vital assistance from Pyongyang, and almost all southern African independence leaders travelled to the North Korean capital at some point, in search of support. This alliance has continued into the twenty-first century, with African p…

1
William Blakemore Lyon, "Forged in Genocide: Migrant Workers Shaping Colonial Capitalism in Namibia, 1890-1925" (de Gruyter, 2024) 1:29:12

3M ago1:29:12

1:29:12

Forged in Genocide traces the early history of colonial capitalism in Namibia with a central focus on migrants who came to be key to the economy during and as a result of the German genocide of the Herero and Nama (1904-1908). It posits that Namibia, far from being a colonial backwater of the early 20th century, became highly integrated into the la…

1
Lea David, "A Victim's Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles: Desire Objects and Human Rights"(Columbia UP, 2025) 1:17:09

3M ago1:17:09

1:17:09

Everyday items found at the sites of atrocities possess a striking emotional force. Victims’ garments, broken glasses, wallets, shoes, and other such personal property that are recovered from places of death including concentration camps, mass graves, and prisons have become staples of memorial museums, exhibited to the public as material testimony…

1
Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024) 38:48

3M ago38:48

38:48

Mass violence comes not only from states, but also from people. By analyzing mass violence as social interaction through survivor accounts and other sources, Conditions of Violence (de Gruyter, 2024) presents understudied agents, aims and practices of direct violence and ways of action of those under persecution. Sound history – examining the noise…

1
Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023) 45:04

3M ago45:04

45:04

This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped shape the new imperial order in Africa. Richard Dorsey Mohun spent his career circulating among the eastern United States, the cities and courts of Europe, and the African continent, as he served the US Sta…

1
Stefan Cristian Ionescu, "Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities, 1944-1950" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:21:28

3M ago1:21:28

1:21:28

On 23rd August 1944, following the collapse of the pro-Nazi dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, Romania changed sides and abandoned the Axis to join the Allies. Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania explores the hopes, struggles and disappointments of Jewish communities in Romania seeking to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust. Focusing on th…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Cassava Republic Press Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Quick Reference Guide