LanguaTalk

New Books in African American Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetworkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go Unpublished for Nearly a Century?: A Conversation with Ricardo Wilson

48 mins; March 27, 2026

Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

26 mins; March 24, 2026

Prolepsis

16 mins; March 23, 2026

Katharine Gerbner, "Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica" (Duke UP, 2025)

57 mins; March 23, 2026

Lisa Nakamura, "The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

43 mins; March 18, 2026

Antwain K. Hunter, "A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865" (UNC Press, 2025)

49 mins; March 16, 2026

Ethelene Whitmire, "The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram" (Viking, 2026)

28 mins; March 15, 2026

Jessica Ann Levy, "Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

65 hours 42 mins; March 13, 2026

Austin McCoy, "Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made" (Atria/One Signal, 2026)

50 mins; March 12, 2026

Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North" (FSG Press, 2025)

36 mins; March 11, 2026

Selina Nwulu, "Black Climates: Notes on Race, Our Environment, and Visions for Equitable Futures" (Chatto & Windus, 2025)

48 mins; March 11, 2026

Dana A. Williams, "Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship" (Amistad, 2025)

50 mins; March 10, 2026

Danielle Wiggins, "Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

62 hours 59 mins; March 08, 2026

Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán, "Detroit Never Left: Black Space, White Borders, Latino Crossings" (NYU Press, 2025)

39 mins; March 03, 2026

Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement" (Routledge, 2025)

66 hours 47 mins; February 28, 2026

Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)

55 mins; February 27, 2026

Stephen Stacks, "The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

67 hours 12 mins; February 24, 2026

John Drabinski, "So Unimaginable a Price: Baldwin and the Black Atlantic" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

59 mins; February 18, 2026

Brian Hallstoos, "Sol Butler: An Olympian's Odyssey through Jim Crow America" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

59 mins; February 17, 2026

Cassandra Shepard, "Settler Colonialism is the Disaster: A Critique of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina and During the COVID-19 Pandemic" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

49 mins; February 15, 2026

Heather Ann Thompson, "Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage" (Pantheon, 2026)

56 mins; February 12, 2026

Nicholas Boggs, "Baldwin: A Love Story" (FSG, 2025)

38 mins; February 10, 2026

Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025)

57 mins; February 10, 2026

Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026) Revisited

60 hours 33 mins; February 08, 2026

Ian Smith, "Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

70 hours 35 mins; February 07, 2026

Garrett Felber, "A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre" (AK Press, 2025)

54 mins; February 06, 2026

Dianna N. Watkins-Dickerson, "A Black Woman for President: Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris" (UP of Mississippi)

60 hours 48 mins; February 04, 2026

The Caste Question with Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao

59 mins; February 01, 2026

Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)

45 mins; January 31, 2026

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine

44 mins; January 29, 2026

Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

105 hours 56 mins; January 29, 2026

Mark Anthony Neal, "New Black Man" (Routledge, 2015)

33 mins; January 28, 2026

Alaina M. Morgan, "Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora" (UNC Press, 2025)

71 hours 10 mins; January 27, 2026

Kimberley Johnson, "Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis" (Cornell UP, 2025)

49 mins; January 25, 2026

Terence Keel, "The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence" (Beacon Press, 2025)

57 mins; January 23, 2026

O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight, "We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

34 mins; January 20, 2026

Kellen Hoxworth, "Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

44 mins; January 20, 2026

Johanna Lukate, "(Dis)Entangled: Black Hair, Race, and Identity" (Coronet, 2025)

45 mins; January 16, 2026

John Samuel Harpham, "Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2025)

95 hours 17 mins; January 11, 2026

Chris Boucher, "Harry "Bucky" Lew: A Biography of the First Black Professional Basketball Player" (McFarland, 2026)

46 mins; January 11, 2026

Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

57 mins; January 10, 2026

Sonya Lea, "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)

48 mins; January 09, 2026

Keidrick Roy, "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism" (Princeton UP, 2024)

51 mins; January 08, 2026

W. Ralph Eubanks, "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land" (Beacon Press, 2026)

64 hours 39 mins; January 07, 2026

Robert D. Bland, "Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation" (UNC Press, 2026)

60 hours 23 mins; January 05, 2026

Ashley Brown, "Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson" (Oxford UP, 2023)

45 mins; January 03, 2026

Andrew S. Curran, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson" (Other Press, 2026)

76 hours 45 mins; January 02, 2026

Nicholas L. Caverly, "Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures" (Stanford UP, 2025)

49 mins; December 26, 2025

Trymaine Lee, "A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" (St. Martins, 2025)

52 mins; December 25, 2025

Brittany Michelle Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)

64 hours 30 mins; December 24, 2025

Karma F. Frierson, "Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz" (U California Press, 2025)

49 mins; December 23, 2025

Cupid Jamila and Joell Myescha, "Who's in the Room? A Guide to Public Relations from the Black Professional Perspective" (Kendall Hunt, 2025)

50 mins; December 20, 2025

Amber Day, "Caught in the Crosshairs: Feminist Comedians and the Culture Wars" (Indiana UP, 2025)

49 mins; December 16, 2025

Joseph L Graves, "Why Black People Die Sooner: What Medicine Gets Wrong about Race and How to Fix It" (Columbia UP, 2025)

27 mins; December 14, 2025

Caitlin Wiesner, "Between the Street and the State: Black Women’s Anti-Rape Activism Amid the War on Crime" (U Pennsylvania, 2025)

75 hours 8 mins; December 11, 2025

David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)

64 hours 47 mins; December 08, 2025

Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026)

66 hours 22 mins; December 08, 2025

Black Girls and How We Fail Them

47 mins; December 04, 2025

Theresa Delgadillo, "Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas" (U Michigan Press, 2024)

55 mins; December 02, 2025

Jonathan Eig, "King: A Life" (FSG, 2023)

39 mins; November 27, 2025

Christina Cecelia Davidson, "Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2024)

40 mins; November 26, 2025

Sharon White Rewires Disco

68 hours 0 mins; November 25, 2025

Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)

58 mins; November 22, 2025

David Chanoff, "Anthony Benezet: Quaker, Abolitionist, Anti-Racist" (U Georgia Press, 2025)

46 mins; November 22, 2025

Rizvana Bradley, "Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form" (Stanford UP, 2023)

62 hours 9 mins; November 15, 2025

Lucy Caplan, "Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera" (Harvard UP, 2025)

59 mins; November 15, 2025

Ronald Angelo Johnson, "Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2025)

85 hours 55 mins; November 13, 2025

James Brown's War on Disco

61 hours 26 mins; November 11, 2025

Joseph P. Viteritti, "Radical Dreamers: Race, Choice, and the Failure of American Education" (Oxford UP, 2025)

41 mins; November 11, 2025

Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)

42 mins; November 08, 2025

Yunxiang Gao, "Arise Africa, Roar China: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2021)

56 mins; November 08, 2025

House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr.

55 mins; November 06, 2025

Diane T. Feldman, "Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit: The Struggle for Power and Equality in Holmes County, Mississippi" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

65 hours 9 mins; November 06, 2025

Diane T. Feldman, "Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit: The Struggle for Power and Equality in Holmes County, Mississippi" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

65 hours 9 mins; November 06, 2025

Disco's Revenge

59 mins; October 28, 2025

Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025)

85 hours 36 mins; October 28, 2025

Amanda Laury Kleintop, "Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)

60 hours 0 mins; October 27, 2025

Javier Wallace, "Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams" (Duke UP, 2025)

66 hours 41 mins; October 26, 2025

Patrick Parr, "Malcolm Before X" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024)

26 mins; October 26, 2025

Ashley D. Farmer, "Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore" (Pantheon, 2025)

25 mins; October 25, 2025

Michael W. Twitty, "Recipes from the American South" (Phaidon Press, 2025)

41 mins; October 21, 2025

Peter D. Blackmer, "Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers" (UVA Press, 2025)

81 hours 23 mins; October 21, 2025

Peter C. Zimmerman, "The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

56 mins; October 20, 2025

Bill V. Mullen, "James Baldwin: Living in Fire" (Pluto Press, 2019)

59 mins; October 19, 2025

Darren Mueller, "At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz" (Duke UP, 2024)

74 hours 40 mins; October 12, 2025

Melissa M. Matthes, "When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter" (Harvard UP, 2021)

67 hours 46 mins; October 11, 2025

Claire Whitlinger, "Between Remembrance and Repair: Commemorating Racial Violence in Philadelphia, Mississippi" (UNC Press, 2020)

35 mins; October 10, 2025

John Minton, "Folk Music and Song in the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

63 hours 20 mins; October 09, 2025

Zara Anishanslin, "The Painter's Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution" (Harvard UP, 2025)

49 mins; October 07, 2025

Marion Orr, "House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr." (UNC Press, 2025)

59 mins; October 06, 2025

Meredith L. Roman, "The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

54 mins; October 05, 2025

Ashleigh Wade on How Black Girls Use Social Media

80 hours 13 mins; September 29, 2025

Mary E. Hicks, "Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025)

66 hours 43 mins; September 26, 2025

Constance Bailey, "Conversations with Kiese Laymon" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

67 hours 26 mins; September 24, 2025

Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2025)

35 mins; September 24, 2025

Nicholas Bromell, "The Time is Always Now: Black Political Thought and the Transformation of U.S. Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2013)

60 hours 48 mins; September 23, 2025

Kenja McCray, "Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership" (NYU Press, 2025)

69 hours 54 mins; September 22, 2025

Calvin Schermerhorn, "The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made" (Yale UP, 2025)

64 hours 55 mins; September 21, 2025

Jonathan White and Lucas Morel, "Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln" (Reedy Press, 2025)

38 mins; September 20, 2025

Marcus Rediker, "Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea" (Penguin Group, 2025)

64 hours 57 mins; September 20, 2025

Click here to see more

New Books in African American Studies

Useful pages

Find a tutor

Languages