“When done well, scholarly podcasting can engage with a wider audience, enhance visibility, enrich promotion and tenure portfolios, strengthen professional networking, and foster a sense of community.”
Peter Alegi
In this week’s newsletter
University of Newcastle Book Fair September 12-16
Alternative Angles: Forests
Fast Five with Philip Cunliffe
Africa Past and Present with Peter Alegi
University of Newcastle Book Fair
Readers in New South Wales can look forward to the University of Newcastle Book fair being held from Friday, September 12 - Tuesday, September 16 at the Great Hall, Callaghan Campus. You can find second-hand books, CDs, DVDs, sheet music, records and more! This year over 50,000 items will be available for purchase. Since its beginning in 1983, this book fair has raised almost 1 million dollars to fund different projects and scholarships covering a range of disciplines. Learn more about the event here.
Alternative Angles: Forests
In this Alternative Angles segment, we have an expert in International Relations, a Geographer, and Anthropologist all considering forests.
Ariadne Collins interrogates the most ambitious global plan to incentivize people away from deforesting activities: the United Nations-endorsed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative. In Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield, she questions the effectiveness of market-based policies that govern forests in the interest of mitigating climate change.
In For the Sake of Forests and Gods: Governing Life and Livelihood in the Philippine Uplands, Wolfram H. Dressler examines the impacts of religious and environmental non-governmental actors on the lives of highlanders on Palawan Island, the Philippines. Using a relational approach and based on more than two decades of experience in Palawan, he explains the causes and consequences of converging religious and environmental nongovernmental reforms in indigenous upland spaces.
When you open Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human, you are entering a forest of dreams: the dreams of dogs and men, dreams about policemen and peccaries, dreams prophetic and dreams instrumental. In creating this "anthropology beyond the human," Kohn calls into question our tendency to conflate representation with language, rethinking the relationship between human language and other forms of representation that humans share with other beings.
Fast Five with Philip Cunliffe
Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the UCL Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction. His most recent book is The National Interest: Politics after Globalization, and he writes widely on questions of sovereignty, crisis management and international order.
The Anti-Catastrophe League by Tom Ough - I’m very much enjoying this wonderfully-titled and engaging narrative non-fiction book that explores the various existential risks that confront humanity, and the scientists and visionaries working to counter these catastrophes. A must-read for all those like me, concerned with the history and future of risk and disaster reduction.
A World in Depression, 1929-1939 by Charles P. Kindleberger - Having only read selections from this back in my undergraduate days, I’m now re-reading the whole thing as part of preparing my international relations course for the coming academic year. Credited with bring the inspiration for hegemonic stability theory, Kindleberger’s history has recently received renewed attention with the relative decline of the US as against China, prompting the larger question of who will provide the infrastructure to underpin the global economy of this century.
Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Céline - The novel recounts the escapades of Céline’s alter ego Ferdinand Bardamu – brilliantly-written, mesmerizing and grotesque all at once. Published in 1936, Céline’s subsequent support for Vichy is entirely consistent with this dark and misanthropic account of early 20th century France.
The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World by Branko Milanović - I am lucky enough to have an advance copy of this, Milanović’s forthcoming book. Milanović is one of the most interesting and readable economists writing today, and in this book he offers his account of the decline of global neoliberalism through trade blocs, tariff wars, the emergence of a global middle class, and growing discontent despite increasing global wealth and equality.
Advanced Introduction to Political Jurisprudence by Martin Loughlin - This brilliant, concise analysis by one of the greatest living Anglophone political and legal theorists, makes the case for reviving the discipline of political jurisprudence, a neglected school of thought that connects law to politics without sinking into the quagmire of moral philosophy. The book traces the historical evolution of political jurisprudence in European political thought and explains the concepts we need to overcome our current political problems – namely, authority, freedom and sovereignty.
Listen to Philip’s NBN interview below, and check out his book The National Interest: Politics after Globalization
Interview with Peter Alegi, host of Africa Past and Present
Q: Can you first tell us about yourself?
A: Born and raised in Rome, Italy, I’m a Professor of African History and Global Soccer at Michigan State University. My research focuses on South African history and African football and society. I am currently writing a book titled Afripod: How Scholarly Podcasting Is Changing African Studies, based partly on my experience hosting of Africa Past and Present—the longest-running African studies podcast in the world.
Q: Can you describe Africa Past and Present for our readers?
A: Africa Past and Present is a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. I launched it with Peter Limb at Michigan State University in 2008 when there were few, if any, comparable podcasts. Monthly episodes feature “fireside chat”-style interviews with scholars and practitioners from a wide range of perspectives. Africa Past and Present is produced by Matrix: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences and supported by the Department of History and the African Studies Center at Michigan State.
Q: What motivated you and Peter to start podcasting?
A: We hatched the idea for an African studies podcast a few months after the first iPhone came out. At the time we were frustrated with the limited social impact of Africanist scholarship in the United States. Since both of us had experience with oral history and radio interviews we thought a podcast could be an original way to expand public access to African studies. Fortunately, the History Department and Matrix supported the project from the very beginning. Also, we knew we could rely on the MSU African Studies Center, one of the largest and oldest Title VI National Resource Centers in the country, as a regular provider of interesting guests for the show.
Q: Can you share a bit more about the mission and goals of your podcast?
A: Africa Past and Present aims to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge about African experiences in a down-to-earth and informed manner. Peter Limb and I found that the podcast combined our shared interest in merging scholarship, social justice activism, and Michigan State’s land-grant mission to “democratize knowledge.”
Q: How do you see scholarly podcasting as valuable in academia broadly, and in the field of African Studies specifically?
A: When done well, scholarly podcasting can engage with a wider audience, enhance visibility, enrich promotion and tenure portfolios, strengthen professional networking, and foster a sense of community. In African Studies specifically, I like to think that podcasting counters our marginalization in North American higher education. An example of this was how Africa Past and Present’s first episode with Senegalese historian Cheikh Babou embodied our commitment to foregrounding work, ideas, and voices of historically underrepresented scholars in our field. Interestingly, this later helped Africa Past and Present become a model for other scholarly podcasts, such as Msia Kibona Clark’s The Hip Hop African and Bamba Ndiaye’s The Africanist podcast. On a personal level, hosting a podcast makes me read consistently outside my areas of expertise and inspires me to be a better writer and public speaker.
Q: The podcasting scene has changed quite a bit since you started. What changes have you noticed and what has stayed the same?
A: The three biggest changes in podcasting since 2008 are its mainstreaming in the aftermath of Serial in 2014; platformization (John L. Sullivan’s term) by Apple, Spotify, and YouTube; and the rise of the “Manosphere.” Overall, it seems that the extraordinary power of the major platforms with their algorithms, market logics, and walled gardens have sharply reduced the discoverability, and therefore the visibility, of independent scholarly podcasts. But, to quote the Grateful Dead: we will get by, we will survive!
Q: If you could have any one person on your podcast, who would it be?
A: Barack Obama.
Q: Do you have a favorite episode that you’ve recorded, and what episodes should someone who is new to Africa Past and Present start off with?
A: That’s a bit like asking a parent who is their favorite child! But seriously, curious listeners can start with the episodes featuring Malian scholar Cherif Keita, and South African historian Neo Ramoupi.
Q: Do you have any advice for graduate students and early career scholars who want to get involved in public academic work like podcasting?
A: Graduate students and early career scholars thinking of getting into podcasting must consider the time and energy the medium demands, especially when weighed against professional and personal duties and responsibilities. With millions of podcasts available today, even casual listeners expect lively hosts, stimulating content, and semi-professional quality sound at the very least. As a colleague reminded me in a recent interview: “the truth is being consistently interesting, if not entertaining, and listenable is quite hard.” So have fun but take it seriously.
Q: Can you share anything about Afripod: How Scholarly Podcasting Is Changing African Studies, the book you are writing, with our readers?
A: It’s my attempt to tell the story of the growth of independent academic podcasting and assess its impact on the study of Africa in the humanities and social sciences. The book’s main argument is that we cannot fully appreciate how the field of African Studies is changing without a deeper understanding of scholarly podcasting. Drawing on 50 hours of interviews with sound producers, podcasters, scholars, and listeners, as well as other sources, the manuscript is organized thematically. There are chapters on the intimacy of sound, a history of Africa Past and Present, teaching with podcasts, career development, and the afterlives of podcasts. As it discusses the value of learning more about the production, distribution, consumption, and preservation of podcasts, the book also serves as a practitioner’s guide to the genre.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience about you, or the podcast?
A: When I started Africa Past and Present I had absolutely no idea it would become a fundamental part of who I am as a scholar.
Listen to some of Peter’s great interviews on Africa Past and Present !
