African Studies Book List · 
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 Titles
After Tears
By Niq MhlongoBafana Kuzwayo is a young man with a weight on his shoulders. After flunking his law studies at the University of Cape Town, he returns home to Soweto, where he must decide how to break the news to his family.…
Christianity and Public Culture in Africa
Edited by Harri EnglundChristianity and Public Culture in Africa takes readers beyond familiar images of religious politicians and populations steeped in spirituality. It shows how critical reason and Christian convictions have combined in surprising ways as African Christians confront issues such as national constitutions, gender relations, and the continuing struggle with HIV/AIDS.…
We Are All Zimbabweans Now
By James KilgoreWe Are All Zimbabweans Now is a political thriller set in Zimbabwe in the hopeful, early days of Robert Mugabe’s rise to power in the late 1980s. When Ben Dabney, a Wisconsin graduate student, arrives in the country, he is enamored with Mugabe and the promises of his government’s model of racial reconciliation.…
Welcome to Our Hillbrow
A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa
By Phaswane MpeWelcome to Our Hillbrow is an exhilarating and disturbing ride through the chaotic and hyper-real zone of Hillbrow—microcosm of all that is contradictory, alluring, and painful in the postapartheid South African psyche.…
African Studies titles sorted by release date (or by book title):
West African Challenge to Empire
Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War
By Mahir Şaul and Patrick RoyerWest 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.…
Witchcraft Dialogues
Anthropological and Philosophical Exchanges
Edited by George Clement Bond and Diane M. CiekawyWitchcraft Dialogues analyzes the complex manner in which human beings construct, experience, and think about the “occult.” It brings together anthropologists, philosophers, and sociologists, from diverse social and cultural backgrounds, to engage the metaphysical properties of “witchcraft” and “sorcery” and to explore their manifestations in people's lived experiences.…
Environmental Justice in South Africa
Edited by David A. McDonaldEnvironmental Justice in South Africa provides a systematic overview of the first ten years of postapartheid environmental politics. Written by leading activists and academics in the field, this edited collection offers the first critical perspective of environmental justice theory and practice in South Africa.…
From Guerrillas to Government
The Eritrean People's Liberation Front
By David PoolIn 1991 the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) took over Asmara and completed the liberation of Eritrea; formal independence came two years later after a referendum in May 1993. It was the climax of a thirty-year struggle, though the EPLF itself was formed only in the early 1970s.…
The Post-Apartheid Constitutions
Perspectives on South Africa's Basic Law
Edited by Penelope Andrews and Stephen EllmannOffering a unique range of perspectives on South Africa's interim and final constitutions, this collection of essays by scholars, lawyers, and political leaders illuminates the many issues of process, substance, and context presented by the constitutions.…
Pastimes and Politics
Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945
By Laura FairThe first decades of the twentieth century were years of dramatic change in Zanzibar, a time when the social, economic, and political lives of island residents were in incredible flux, framed by the abolition of slavery, the introduction of colonialism, and a tide of urban migration.…
In the Company of Diamonds
De Beers, Kleinzee, and the Control of a Town
By Peter CarstensAfter the 1925 discovery of diamonds in the semi-desert of the northwest coast of South Africa, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. virtually proclaimed its dominion over the whole region. In the town of Kleinzee, the company owns all the real estate and infrastructure, and controls and administers both the town and the industry.…
Empire State-Building
War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952
By Joanna LewisThis history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change. It asks four questions:Why was Kenya's welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies?Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor?Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine?If there was a transformatory element of colonial rule that sought to address poverty, where and why did it fall down?The answers offer revealing insight into the dynamics of rule in the late colonial period in Kenya.…
Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa
Gender, Culture, and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist
Edited by Dorothy L. HodgsonThe dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, use diverse analytic approaches to demonstrate that pastoralist gender relations are dynamic, relational, historical, and produced through complex local-translocal interactions.…
Brothers at War
Making Sense of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War
By Tekaste Negash and Kjetil TronvollThe war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along their common borders and spent several hundred million dollars on military equipment.…
After the TRC
Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation
Edited by Wilmot James and Linda van de VijverHas South Africa dealt effectively with the past, and is the country ready to face the future? What are the challenges facing both government and civil society in the years ahead? These and other questions are explored in this collection of essays by international and local commentators on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.…
Ghanaian Popular Fiction
Thrilling Discoveries in Conjugal Life and Other Tales
By Stephanie NewellThis is a study of the 'unofficial' side of African fiction—the largely undocumented writing, publishing, and reading of pamphlets and paperbacks—which exists outside the grid of mass production. Stephanie Newell examines the popular fiction of Ghana produced since the 1930s, analyzing the distinctive ways in which narrative forms are borrowed and regenerated by authors and readers.…
Paths of Accommodation
Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920
By David RobinsonBetween 1880 and 1920, Muslim Sufi orders became pillars of the colonial regimes and economies of Senegal and Mauritania. In Paths of Accommodation, David Robinson examines the ways in which the leaders of the orders negotiated relations with the Federation of French West Africa in order to preserve autonomy within the religious, social, and economic realms while abandoning the political sphere to their non-Muslim rulers.…
South Africa’s Resistance Press
Alternative Voices in the Last Generation under Apartheid
Edited by Les Switzer and Mohamed AdhikariSouth Africa's Resistance Press is a collection of essays celebrating the contributions of scores of newspapers, newsletters, and magazines that confronted the state in the generation after 1960.…
Ayi Kwei Armah, Radical Iconoclast
Pitting the Imaginary Worlds against the Actual
By Ode OgedeGhanaian novelist, essayist, and short-story writer Ayi Kwei Armah has won international recognition as one of Africa’s most articulate writers. In this book, Ode Ogede argues that previous critics have misinterpreted the aesthetic and literary influences that have shaped Armah’s artistic vision and overlooked his most significant and valuable contribution to the problems of writing “outside the prison-house of conventional English.…
The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1799–1999
Historical Essays in Celebration of the Bicentenary of the LMS in Southern Africa
Edited by John de GruchyCompiled to mark the bicentenary of the London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, this volume provides an assessment of the work and legacy of the Society, which played a critical role in the politics and societies of the subcontinent and whose leading figure—like David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, and John Philip—were major historical actors in their day.…
Property Rights & Political Development in Ethiopia & Eritrea
By Sandra JoiremanThis book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions that govern land access are fundamental in affecting the distribution of wealth in a society.…
Revolution and Religion in Ethiopia
The Growth and Persecution of the Mekane Yesus Church, 1974–85
By Oyvind M. EideStudies of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution have hitherto almost completely ignored religion, in spite of the commitment of a great majority of Ethiopian people to one or another religious tradition. Moreover, existing studies focus almost exclusively on the center, on national politics, and on the evolution of national institutions.…
The UDF
A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983-1991
By Jeremy SeekingsThe 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.…
The Bushmen of Southern Africa
A Foraging Society in Transition
By Andy Smith, Candy Malherbe, Mat Gunther and Penny BerensThis book, by an anthropologist, historian, social anthropologist, and schoolteacher, introduces the long history and current condition of the hunting people of southern Africa to students, teachers, and interested laypersons.…
