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Podcast: New Books in Military History
Episode: Anette Hoffmann, "Knowing by Ear: Listening to Voice Recordings with African Prisoners of War in German Camps (1915–1918)" (Duke UP, 2024)
Description: During World War I, thousands of young African men conscripted to fight for France and Britain were captured and held as prisoners of war in Germany, where their stories and songs were recorded and archived by German linguists. In Knowing by Ear: Listening to Voice Recordings with African Prisoners of War in German Camps (1915–1918) (Duke University Press, 2024), Anette Hoffmann demonstrates that listening to these acoustic recordings as historical sources, rather than linguistic samples, opens up possibilities for new historical perspectives and the formation of alternate archival practices and knowledge production. She foregrounds the archival presence of individual speakers and posit...