African Studies
About African Studies
Ohio University Press’s African Studies publishing program includes regional surveys, works of distinguished scholarship that contribute to academic debates, and multiauthor collections on key topics. Groundbreaking series such as Eastern African Studies, Western African Studies, Research in International Studies (RIS) Africa, RIS Global and Comparative Studies, and the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History have redefined the study of Africa. The New African Histories series promotes continued research on the lived experience of Africans while pushing the boundaries of social history in exciting new directions. A forthcoming series, Africa in World History, will produce accessibly written books by African specialists who speak to current images of Africa in the popular culture, drawing attention to the parallels in human experience in Africa and other parts of the world.
Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, our list promotes the work of both first-time authors and established scholars. Topics include the nature of the colonial state, social history and social life, religion and politics, conflict and reconstruction, environmental history, poverty, public health, and development.
Many books on our African Studies list are available in paperback editions.
Featured Title(s)
The African AIDS Epidemic
A History
By John Iliffe
This history of the African AIDS epidemic is a much-needed, accessibly written historical account of the most serious epidemiological catastrophe of modern times. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History answers President Thabo Mbeki’s provocative question as to why Africa has suffered this terrible epidemic.…
Butterflies & Barbarians
Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa
Swiss missionaries played a primary and little-known role in explaining Africa to the literate world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book emphasizes how these European intellectuals, brought to the deep rural areas of southern Africa by their vocation, formulated and ordered knowledge about the continent.…
Fighting the Greater Jihad
Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913
In Senegal, the Muridiyya, a large Islamic Sufi order, is the single most influential religious organization, including among its numbers the nation’s president. Yet little is known of this sect in the West.…
Stages of Self
Dramatic Monologues of Laforgue, Valéry, and Mallarmé
The dramatic monologue has attracted considerable critical attention in English but is rarely considered relevant to French poetry and has generally been ignored in studies of comparative literature. In Stages of Self, various poems by Jules Laforgue, Stephane Mallarmé, and Paul Ambroise Valery are analyzed to show that they conform to the norms of the genre even though they bear little surface resemblance to the dramatic monologues by Browning, Pound, or Eliot.…
Stepping Forward – On Sale
Black Women in Africa and the Americas
Edited by Catherine Higgs, Barbara A. Moss and Earline Rae Ferguson
A unique and important study, Stepping Forward examines the experiences of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women in Africa and African diaspora communities from a variety of perspectives in a number of different settings.…
The Struggle for Meaning
Reflections on Philosophy, Culture, and Democracy in Africa
The Struggle for Meaning is a landmark publication by one of African philosophy's leading figures, Paulin J. Hountondji, best known for his critique of ethnophilosophy in the late 1960s and early 1970s.…
Succession to High Office in Botswana – On Sale
Three Case Studies
Edited by Jack Parson
This book examines the process through which the mantle of leadership passed from one leader to another in Botswana. It concerns the succession to high office in Botswana over the course of more than half a century from the colonial time to the present.…
Swahili Origins
Swahili Culture and The Shungwaya Phenomenon
Kiswahili has become the lingua franca of eastern Africa. Yet there can be few historic peoples whose identity is as elusive as that of the Swahili. Some have described themselves as Arabs, as Persians or even, in one place, as Portuguese.…
Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
A compelling study of the origins and trajectory of one of the legendary black uprisings against apartheid, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid draws on insights gained from the literature on collective action and social movements.…
Themes in West Africa’s History
Edited by Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong
There has long been a need for a new textbook on West Africa’s history. In Themes in West Africa’s History, editor Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and his contributors meet this need, examining key themes in West Africa's prehistory to the present through the lenses of their different disciplines.…
Traditional Healers and Childhood in Zimbabwe
Based on the author’s fieldwork among the people of Zezuru, this study focuses on children as clients and as healers in training. In Reynolds’s ethnographic investigation of possession and healing, she pays particular attention to the way healers are identified and authenticated in communities, and how they are socialized in the use of medicinal plants, dreams, and ritual healing practices.…
The UDF – On Sale
A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983-1991
The new South Africa cannot be understood without a knowledge of the history of the UDF and its role in the transition to democracy. This is the first major study of an organization that transformed South African politics in the 1980s.…
Uganda Now – On Sale
Between Decay & Development
Edited by Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle
Can the revolutionary government of Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement put Uganda back on the road from decay to development?These informed assessments put the present situation in context.…
Unhappy Valley
Clan, Class & State In Colonial Kenya
By Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale
This long-awaited book is a considerable revision in the understanding of the history of colonial Kenya and, more widely, colonialism in Africa. There is a substantial amount of new work and this is interlocked with shared areas of concern that the authors have been exploring since 1976.…
Violence, Political Culture & Development in Africa
Edited by Preben Kaarsholm
Africa has witnessed a number of transitions to democracy in recent years. Coinciding with this upsurge in democratic transitions have been spectacular experiences of social disintegration. An alternative to discourses of the “failed” and “collapsed” state in Africa is an approach that takes seriously the complex historical processes underlying the political development of individual nation states.…
Voices from Madagascar/Voix de Madagascar
An Anthology of Contemporary Francophone Literature/Anthologie de littérature francophone contemporaine
Edited by Jacques Bourgeacq and Liliane Ramarosoa
There is currently in Madagascar a rich literary production (short stories, poetry, novels, plays) that has not yet reached the United States for lack of diffusion outside the country. Until recently, Madagascar suffered from political isolation resulting from its breakup with France in the 1970s and the eighteen years of Marxism that followed.…
Wanasema
Conversations with African Writers
Edited by Donald Burness
There is a tendency to regard African literature as a homogenous product. Certainly it is true that African writers have created a vibrant, modern literature. Nevertheless, they come from specific societies and reflect vastly differing worlds.…
War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa
The Patterns and Meanings of State-Level Conflict in the 19th Century
War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa examines the nature and objectives of violence in the region in the nineteenth century. It is particularly concerned with highland Ethiopia and the Great Lakes.…
We Are Fighting the World – On Sale
A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947-1999
By Gary Kynoch
Since the late 1940s, a violent African criminal society known as the Marashea has operated in and around South Africa’s gold mining areas. With thousands of members involved in drug smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping, the Marashea was more influential in the day-to-day lives of many black South Africans under apartheid than were agents of the state.…
West African Challenge to Empire – On Sale
Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War
By Mahir Saul and Patrick Royer
West African Challenge to Empire examines the anticolonial war in the Volta and Bani region in 1915-16. It was the largest challenge that the French ever faced in their West African colonial empire, and one of the largest armed oppositions to colonialism anywhere in Africa.…
The Western Bahr Al Ghazal under British Rule, 1898–1956
Western Bahr al-Ghazal is perhaps one of the least known places in Africa. Yet this remote part of the Republic of Sudan can be regarded as a historical barometer, registering major developments in the history of the Nile valley.…
Willing Migrants – On Sale
Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848–1960
Eighty-five percent of Black African migrants to France come from a single ethnic group in a single region of West Africa. The Soninke have the oldest tradition of labor migration within Africa and were also probably the first itinerant traders of West Africa; an important proportion continue to be merchants today.…
