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The Ohio University Press Podcast

The Ohio University Press Podcast

By: New Books Network
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Interviews with authors of Ohio University Press books.New Books Network Art Literary History & Criticism World
Episodes
  • Mesrob Vartavarian, "Privileged Minorities: A History of Wealth Concentration on South Africa" (Ohio UP, 2026)

    Mesrob Vartavarian, "Privileged Minorities: A History of Wealth Concentration on South Africa" (Ohio UP, 2026)
    Jun 21 2026
    Mesrob Vartavarian has written a wonderful book. Privileged Minorities: A History of Wealth Concentration on South Africa (Ohio UP, 2026) argues that the rise of privileged minorities – small, exclusive groups that dominate political and economic life – parallels the development of successful anticolonial movements. Vartavarian traces how distinct sociocultural groups in South Africa navigated and negotiated these advantages from the Dutch colonial era through the rise and decline of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). He then demonstrates why ANC elites have not dismantled minority privilege, and how challenges from marginalised groups have served to reshape entrenched advantages by incorporating new actors into existing structures. These dynamics have produced composite systems of accumulation that have deepened socio-economic inequality. Privileged Minorities offers a compelling framework for understanding how structural advantage persists and evolves, even in the wake of promised liberation from political and economic elites. Mesrob Vartavarian recommends two books for further learning at the end of our interview. They are: Anthony Butler (2025). Presidential Power, Jacana Media; and Jeffrey A. Winters (2012). Oligarchy, Cambridge University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Alice Wiemers, "Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2021)

    Alice Wiemers, "Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2021)
    Feb 28 2026
    Most development histories focus on large-scale projects and multi-year plans. But how would we understand development differently if we chose a different starting point? In Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Ohio UP, 2021), Alice Wiemers exchanges the center for the periphery. Writing outwards from Kpasenpke, a village in northern Ghana, Wiemers shows how the daily labor of rural people, local officials and family networks have all shaped a practice of rural statecraft centered on developmentalism. By insisting on the specificity of the hinterland and interchangeability of its so-called “developers”, Village Work proposes a new framework for approaching Ghana’s twentieth century. Elisa Prosperetti is a Visiting Assistant Professor in African history at Mount Holyoke College. Her research focuses on the connected histories of education and development in postcolonial West Africa. Contact her at: www.elisaprosperetti.net. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    56 mins
  • Sara Petrosillo, "Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture" (Ohio State UP, 2023)

    Sara Petrosillo, "Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture" (Ohio State UP, 2023)
    Jan 19 2026
    Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023). Listen all the way to the end for a great description of the process of hunting with birds! While critical discourse about falconry metaphors in premodern literature is dominated by depictions of women as unruly birds in need of taming, women in the Middle Ages claimed the symbol of a hawking woman on their personal seals, trained and flew hawks, and wrote and read poetic texts featuring female falconers. Sara Petrosillo's Hawking Women demonstrates how cultural literacy in the art of falconry mapped, for medieval readers, onto poetry and challenged patriarchal control. Examining texts written by, for, or about women, Hawking Women uncovers literary forms that arise from representations of avian and female bodies. Readings from Sir Orfeo, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and hawking manuals, among others, show how female characters are paired with their hawks not to assert dominance over the animal but instead to recraft the stand-in of falcon for woman as falcon with woman. In the avian hierarchy female hawks have always been the default, the dominant, and thus these medieval interspecies models contain lessons about how women resisted a culture of training and control through a feminist poetics of the falconry practice. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    51 mins
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