New Books in Caribbean Studies

Feb 28 2025 419 ep. 58 mins 656
New Books in Caribbean Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with scholars of the Caribbean about their new books.

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  Society & Culture  History
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Aliyah Khan on the Muslim Caribbean

Feb 28 2025 52 mins  
In this episode, Saeed Khan and Chella Ward sat down with Dr Aliyah Khan to discuss Muslimness in the Caribbean, drawing on Aliyah’s book Far From Mecca and ongoing important work in this area. This wide-ranging conversation covers decolonial solidarities and neglected histories, and is part of our Forgotten Ummah series, where we investigate Muslimness in places outside of the M

Jenny Shaw, "The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery" (UNC Press, 2024)

Feb 23 2025 54 mins  
The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery (UNC Press, 2024) is a dramatic transatlantic story about five women who birthed children by the same prominent Barbados politician and enslaver. Two of the women were his wives, two he enslaved, and one was a servant in his household. All were determined to make their way in a world that vastly and differentially

Lindsay O'Neill, "The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey Into and Out of Slavery" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Feb 21 2025 49 mins  
In 1716 two princes from Mpfumo—what is today Maputo, the capital of Mozambique—boarded a ship licensed by the East India Company bound for England. Instead, their perfidious captain sold them into slavery in Jamaica. After two years of pleading their case, the princes—known in the historical record as Prince James and Prince John—convinced a lawyer to purchase them, free t

Stephanie M. Pridgeon, "Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Feb 19 2025 57 mins  
In Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas (U Toronto Press, 2025), Stephanie M. Pridgeon explores cultural depictions of Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity within a comparative, inter-American framework. The dynamics of Jewishness interacting with other racial categories differ significantly in Latin America and t

Tao Leigh Goffe, "Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis" (Doubleday Books, 2025)

Feb 10 2025 64 mins  
In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise, the Caribbean and its people would come to pay the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuse. In Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis (Doubleday Books, 2025), Dr. Tao L

Greg Childs on Seditious Conspiracy (EF, JP)

Jan 23 2025 34 mins  
What a difference four years makes. Back in February 2021, still struggling to understand what had just happened at the Capitol, John and Elizabeth spoke with Brandeis historian Greg Childs. He is an expert in Latin American political movements and public space; his Seditious Spaces: Race, Freedom, and the 1798 Conspiracy in Bahia, Brazil is imminently forthcoming from Cambridge UP

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe

Jan 23 2025 69 mins  
Henry Christophe was born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, and fought to overthrow the British in North America before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue—as Haiti was then called—to end slavery. He rose to power and became their king. In his time, he was popular and famous the world over. So how did he become an enigma? In The First

Andrew Gomez, "Constructing Cuban America: Race and Identity in Florida's Caribbean South, 1868–1945" (U Texas Press, 2024)

Jan 13 2025 46 mins  
How Black and white Cubans navigated issues of race, politics, and identity during the post-Civil War and early Jim Crow eras in South Florida. On July 4, 1876, during the centennial celebration of US independence, the city of Key West was different from other cities. In some of post–Civil War Florida, Black residents were hindered from participating in 4th of July festivities, b

Jorge Duany, "Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Jan 12 2025 85 mins  
In the second edition of Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2024), Jorge Duany unravels the fascinating and turbulent past and present of an island that is politically and economically tied to the United States, yet culturally distinct. Acquired by the United States from Spain in 1898, Puerto Rico has a peculiar status among Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Simon Hall, "Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s" (Faber and Faber, 2020)

Jan 07 2025 44 mins  
In his new book Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s (Faber, 2020), Simon Hall, a Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds, colorfully details an extraordinary visit by Fidel Castro to New York in the Autumn of 1960 for the opening of the UN General Assembly. Holding court from the iconic Hotel Theresa in Harlem, Castro's riotous stay in New Yo